  The advantages and difficulties of application of Pad\'e approximants to
two-dimensional regression analysis are discussed. New formulation of residuals
is suggested in the method of least squares. It leads to a system of linear
equations in case of rational functions. The possibility of using Tikhonov
regularization technique to avoid overfitting is demonstrated in this approach.
To illustrate the efficiency of the suggested method, several practical cases
from physics and reliability theory are considered.
