NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Antoine Couëtte
Date: 2015 Feb 23, 00:34 -0800
Good Morning Paul,
Yes, in Chapter XIV of his book "La Navigation astronomique, fondements, applications, perspectives" (July 2000) Philippe Bourbon gives very interesting analytical insights and computations to solve our problem through Calculus and Statistics only. This is a very interesting reference and thank you for bringing it up to our attention. Note: For interested readers, this book also includes an excellent French into English Navigation terms dictionary.
It is true that Philippe does not mention Professor Georges Bodenez's Solution published in 1976 which is essentially a 3D Geometry based solution.
My own guessing explanation would be that if Philippe had to discover new kinds of solutions (he actually gives 2 variants of them), Calculus and statistic matrices were a good path to be followed, as it is an area he is quite familiar with.
Antoine