APPLICATION OF PADE APPROXIMANTS TO DETERMINATION OF αs(M 2

We have applied Padapproximants to perturbative QCD calculations of event shape observables in e + e − → hadrons. We used the exact O(� 2 ) prediction and the (0/1) Pade approximant to estimate the O(� 3 ) term for 15 observables, and in each case determineds(M 2 Z ) from comparison with hadronic Z 0 decay data from the SLD experiment. We found the scatter among thes(M 2 Z ) values to be significantly reduced compared with the standard O(� 2 ) determination, implying that the Padmethod provides at least a partial approximation of higher-order perturbative contributions to event shape observables.