If a function

is approximated by the first

terms of the set of Laguerre functions

, then the minimum integral-square error is

in which

are the coefficients of the Laguerre expansion of

and

is a scale factor by which the Laguerre functions can be stretched or compressed. The error

can be minimized further by an optimum choice of

. Generally, it is not simple to determine the optimum scale factor

by analytical methods. In this paper an analytical method based on the power series equivalence of the Laguerre series is presented for determining the asymptotic optimum scale factor

. The method is illustrated by determining

for some classes of functions of importance in system and signal theory. In engineering applications the number of terms used often is sufficiently large so that the asymptotic optimum scale factor

can be expected to be a good approximation to the optimum scale factor

.