How to determine path from noisy X, Y data

Question

I have an unsorted list of noisy X, Y points. They do, however, form a path through the world. I would like an algorithm to draw an approximation of this data using line segment

Answer 1

How many points you have?
A Bezier curve, as mentioned, is a good idea if you have comparedly few points. If you have many points, buiding clusters as suggested by dmckee.

However you also need another constraint for defining the order of points. There have been many good suggestions for how to chose the points, but unless you introduce another constraint, any gives a possible solution.

Possible constraints I can think of:

• shortest path
• most straight segments
• least total absolute rotation
• directional preference (i.e. horizontal / vertical is more likely than crisscrossing)

In all cases, to meet the constraint you probably need to test all permutations of the sequence. If you start with a "good guess", you cayn terminate the others quickly.