Equation 10 (essentially the derivative of eq 9) is now linear in m, so a plot of ∆v
~(m)
vs m will give a straight line of slope -2αe and intercept of (2Be-3αe). You can use the
MATLAB routine experlsq.m on the course web page to perform a least-squares fit.
This allows you to estimate the uncertainty in the slope and intercept and thereby the
uncertainties in αe and Be. (These uncertainties only reflect the scatter of the data and do
not include the uncertainty in each wavelength, which we shall ignore. But we do ignore it.)