Fitting a curve of a certain type to a given set of points in the plane is a basic problem in statistics and has numerous
applications. We consider fitting a polyline with k joints under the min-sum criteria with respect to L
1- and L
2-metrics, which are more appropriate measures than uniform and Hausdorff metrics in statistical context. We present efficient
algorithms for the 1-joint versions of the problem, and fully polynomial-time approximation schemes for the general k-joint versions.