This document introduces the Method of Least Squares (or Minimum Squares) for fitting curves to data points. It explains that this method finds the coefficients of a function that best approximates the relationship between x- and y-values in a dataset by minimizing the sum of squared residuals between the actual and predicted y-values. The document provides an example of using a linear and quadratic function to fit a dataset, showing how to set up and solve the normal equations to determine the coefficients. It also discusses evaluating the quality of fit using the R-squared value.