The increasing number and precision of measurements of neutron star masses , radii , and , in the near future , moments of inertia offer the possibility of precisely determining the neutron star equation of state .
One way to facilitate the mapping of observables to the equation of state is through a parametrization of the latter .
We present here a generic method for optimizing the parametrization of any physically allowed EoS .
We use mock equations of state that incorporate physically diverse and extreme behavior to test how well our parametrization reproduces the global properties of the stars , by minimizing the errors in the observables mass , radius , and the moment of inertia .
We find that using piecewise polytropes and sampling the EoS with five fiducial densities between \sim 1 - 8 times the nuclear saturation density results in optimal errors for the smallest number of parameters .
Specifically , it recreates the radii of the assumed EoS to within less than 0.5 km for the extreme mock equations of state and to within less than 0.12 km for 95 % of a sample of 42 proposed , physically-motivated equations of state .
Such a parametrization is also able to reproduce the maximum mass to within 0.04 M _ { \odot } and the moment of inertia of a 1.338 M _ { \odot } neutron star to within less than 10 % for 95 % of the proposed sample of equations of state .