The Statistical Reference Datasets Project was developed by staff of the Statistical Engineering Division and the Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division within the Information Technology Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

The NIST reference dataset suite contains 27 datasets for validating nonlinear least squares regression analysis software. NLREG has been used to analyze all of these datasets with the following results: NLREG was able to successfully solve 24 of the datasets, producing results that agree with the validated results within 5 or 6 significant digits. Three of the datasets (Gauss1, Gauss2 and Gauss3) did not converge, and NLREG stopped with the message "Singular convergence. Mutually dependent parameters?" The primary suggested starting values were used for all datasets except for MGH17, Lanczos2 and BoxBOD which did not converge with the primary suggested starting values but did converge with the secondary suggested starting values.

In all cases where NLREG reported that it obtained a solution, the answers were correct.

Results produced by NLREG when running each reference dataset can be viewed below. Note in the analysis listings that the background information about the dataset provided by NIST is listed first as an extended comment enclosed between '/*' and '*/' delimiters, the actual NLREG program (usually only a few lines) follows, and the output generated by NLREG is the final portion of the listing.