Extreme Graphics with Extrema

Nov 12, 2012 By Joey Bernard  inGraphicsHOW-TOsReviews

High-energy physics experiments tend to generate huge amounts ofdata. While this data is passed through analysis software, very oftenthe first thing you may want to do is to graph it and see what itactually looks like. To this end, a powerful graphing and plotting programis an absolute must. One available package is called Extrema(http://exsitewebware.com/extrema/index.html). Extremaevolved from an earlier software package named Physica. Physicawas developed at the TRIUMF high-energy centre in British Columbia,Canada. It has both a complete graphical interface for interactive usein data analysis and a command language that allows you to process largerdata sets or repetitive tasks in a batch fashion.

Installing Extrema typically is simply a matter of using yourdistribution's package manager. If you want the source, it is availableat the SourceForge site (http://sourceforge.net/projects/extrema). At SourceForge, therealso is a Windows version,in case you are stuck using such an operating system.

Once it is installedon your Linux box, launching it is as simple as typing inextrema andpressing Enter. At start up, you should see two windows: a visualizationwindow and an analysis window (Figure 1). One of the most important buttonsis the help button. In the analysis window, you can bring it up by clickingon the question mark (Figure 2). In the help window, you can get moredetailed information on all the functions and operators availablein Extrema.

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