[Steuard]

Sadly, the constant term (the average r_0) is never specified in the paper (it seems to be something in the neighborhood of 180?): getting that right is necessary to produce the image, and I can't see any way not to consider it a fifth necessary parameter. So I don't think they've genuinely accomplished their goal.

(Seriously, though, this was a lot of fun!)

[rsfern]

They say in the text that it’s the average value of the data points they fit to. I think whether to count it as a parameter depends on whether you consider standardization to be part of the model or not

[Steuard]

I see your point, that it's really just an overall normalization for the size rather than anything to do with the shape. I can accept that, and I'll grant them the "four non-zero parameters" claim.

Though in that case, I would have liked for them to make it explicit. Maybe normalize it to "1", and scale the other parameters appropriately. (Because as it stands, I don't think you can reproduce their figure from their paper.)