A system and method for displaying a three-dimensional surface along with ellipsoids representing covariances. In one embodiment, at a point on a three dimensional surface, an ellipsoid is formed having principal axes proportional to the eigenvalues of a covariance matrix. The ellipsoid and the three-dimensional surface are projected onto a two-dimensional plane for display on a two-dimensional screen to a user. The covariance matrix may be an estimated error covariance or a sample covariance.