Gaussian function for parameter fitting
 
 Based loosely on fgauss in the book "Numerical Recipies". 
 We did not bother to implement all optimizations at the benefit of having
 easier to use parameters. Instead of position, amplitude and width used in
 the book, we use the traditional Gaussian parameters mean, standard deviation
 and a linear scaling factor (which is mostly useful when combining multiple
 distributions) The cost are some additional computations such as a square
 root and probably a slight loss in precision. This could of course have been
 handled by an appropriate wrapper instead.
 
 Due to their license, we cannot use their code, but we have to implement the
 mathematics ourselves. We hope the loss in precision isn't big.
 
 They are also arranged differently: the book uses
 
 
 amplitude, position, width
 
 
 whereas we use
 
 
 mean, stddev, scaling
 
 
 But we're obviously using essentially the same mathematics.
 
 The function also can use a mixture of gaussians, just use an appropriate
 number of parameters (which obviously needs to be a multiple of 3)