Gompertz: A Scilab program for estimating Gompertz curve using Gauss-Newton method of least squares
A computer program for estimating Gompertz curve using Gauss-Newton method of least squares is described in detail. It is based on the estimation technique proposed in Reddy (1985). The program is developed using Scilab (version 3.1.1), a freely available scientific software package that can be downloaded from http://www.scilab.org/. Data is to be fed into the program from an external disk file which should be in Microsoft Excel format. The output will contain sample size, tolerance limit, a list of initial as well as the final estimate of the parameters, standard errors, value of Gauss-Normal equations namely GN(1) GN(2) and GN(3), No. of iterations, variance(sigma(2)), Durbin-Watson statistic, goodness of fit measures such as R-2, D value, covariance matrix and residuals. It also displays a graphical output of the estimated curve vis a vis the observed curve. It is an improved version of the program proposed in Dastidar (2005).
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