============ Ceres Solver

Ceres Solver [#f1]_ is an open source C++ library for modeling and solving large, complicated optimization problems. It can be used to solve Non-linear Least Squares_ problems with bounds constraints and general unconstrained optimization problems. It is a mature, feature rich, and performant library that has been used in production at Google since 2010. For more, see :doc:features.

[email protected] <https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/ceres-solver>_ is the place for discussions and questions about Ceres Solver. We use the GitHub Issue Tracker <https://github.com/ceres-solver/ceres-solver/issues>_ to manage bug reports and feature requests.

.. toctree:: :maxdepth: 1 :hidden:

features installation tutorial derivatives nnls_modeling nnls_solving nnls_covariance gradient_solver faqs users contributing version_history bibliography license

.. _Non-linear Least Squares: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-linear_least_squares

Cite Us

If you use Ceres Solver for a publication, please cite it as::

@misc{ceres-solver,
  author = "Sameer Agarwal and Keir Mierle and Others",
  title = "Ceres Solver",
  howpublished = "\url{http://ceres-solver.org}",
}

.. rubric:: Footnotes

.. [#f1] While there is some debate as to who invented the method of Least Squares [Stigler], there is no questioning the fact that it was Carl Friedrich Gauss <http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Gauss.html> 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.