docs/source/about.rst - ceres-solver - Git at Google

 .. _chapter-about:

 =====
 About
 =====

 Ceres Solver grew out of the need for general least squares solving at Google.
 Around 2010, Sameer Agarwal and Keir Mierle decided to replace a custom bundle
 adjuster at Google with something more modern. After two years of on-and-off
 development, Ceres Solver was released as open source in May of 2012.

 Acknowledgements
 ----------------

 A number of people have helped with the development and open sourcing
 of Ceres.

 Fredrik Schaffalitzky when he was at Google started the development of
 Ceres, and even though much has changed since then, many of the ideas
 from his original design are still present in the current code.

 Amongst Ceres' users at Google two deserve special mention: William
 Rucklidge and James Roseborough. William was the first user of
 Ceres. He bravely took on the task of porting production code to an
 as-yet unproven optimization library, reporting bugs and helping fix
 them along the way. James is perhaps the most sophisticated user of
 Ceres at Google. He has reported and fixed bugs and helped evolve the
 API for the better.

 Since the initial release of Ceres, a number of people have
 contributed to Ceres by porting it to new platforms, reporting bugs,
 fixing bugs and adding new functionality. We acknowledge all of these
 contributions in the :ref:`chapter-version-history`.

 Origin of the name Ceres Solver
 -------------------------------
 While there is some debate as to who invented the method of Least Squares
 [Stigler]_, there is no debate that it was `Carl Friedrich Gauss
 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss>`_ who brought it to the
 attention of the world. Using just 22 observations of the newly discovered
 asteroid `Ceres <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet)>`_, Gauss
 used the method of least squares to correctly predict when and where the
 asteroid will emerge from behind the Sun [TenenbaumDirector]_. We named our
 solver after Ceres to celebrate this seminal event in the history of astronomy,
 statistics and optimization.
	.. _chapter-about:

	=====
	About
	=====

	Ceres Solver grew out of the need for general least squares solving at Google.
	Around 2010, Sameer Agarwal and Keir Mierle decided to replace a custom bundle
	adjuster at Google with something more modern. After two years of on-and-off
	development, Ceres Solver was released as open source in May of 2012.

	Acknowledgements
	----------------

	A number of people have helped with the development and open sourcing
	of Ceres.

	Fredrik Schaffalitzky when he was at Google started the development of
	Ceres, and even though much has changed since then, many of the ideas
	from his original design are still present in the current code.

	Amongst Ceres' users at Google two deserve special mention: William
	Rucklidge and James Roseborough. William was the first user of
	Ceres. He bravely took on the task of porting production code to an
	as-yet unproven optimization library, reporting bugs and helping fix
	them along the way. James is perhaps the most sophisticated user of
	Ceres at Google. He has reported and fixed bugs and helped evolve the
	API for the better.

	Since the initial release of Ceres, a number of people have
	contributed to Ceres by porting it to new platforms, reporting bugs,
	fixing bugs and adding new functionality. We acknowledge all of these
	contributions in the :ref:`chapter-version-history`.

	Origin of the name Ceres Solver
	-------------------------------
	While there is some debate as to who invented the method of Least Squares
	[Stigler]_, there is no debate that it was `Carl Friedrich Gauss
	<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Gauss>`_ who brought it to the
	attention of the world. Using just 22 observations of the newly discovered
	asteroid `Ceres <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceres_(dwarf_planet)>`_, Gauss
	used the method of least squares to correctly predict when and where the
	asteroid will emerge from behind the Sun [TenenbaumDirector]_. We named our
	solver after Ceres to celebrate this seminal event in the history of astronomy,
	statistics and optimization.