Moving least squares

Moving least squares is a fancy way of finding a good way to draw a curve or a line that goes through some points. Imagine you have a bunch of dots on a sheet of paper, and you want to draw a bumpy line that touches each dot as closely as possible.

To do this, you need some magic math called "least squares." Basically, you draw a line or curve and see how far away each dot is from the line. You square these distances, add them up, and try to find the line or curve that gives you the smallest total of squared distances.

The "moving" part comes in because sometimes you want to make this line or curve more flexible. Imagine you have a set of dots that form a smiley face. A straight line won't fit through all those curves and bumps very well, so you might have to use a more complicated line with lots of bends and twists. Moving least squares lets you add more flexibility to the line or curve by changing the size of the region around each dot that you're using to calculate the line or curve. The more dots you include in this region, the more flexible the line or curve can be.

Overall, moving least squares is a tool that helps you draw bumpy lines or curves that go through a set of dots as closely as possible, while still allowing for some flexibility.