On the Importance of Confident Error Bands for Extrapolations of σ(pp)^tot to High Energies

6 pages, 6 figures.-- Communication presented at the 6th World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics and 8th International Conference on Information System Analysis and Synthesis (SCI/ISAS 2002, Orlando, Florida, Jul 14-18, 2002).
Elastic proton-proton scattering is the most simple process in high-energy hadronic interactions. One of the main tasks in this field is to detemine the total proton cross section σ(pp)^tot in order to reproduce experimental data. Total cross sections are known long ago from accelerator experiments in the energy range sqrt{s}