Although many excellent data plotting programs such as Gnuplot exist, as do programs for data fitting and parameter estimation, it is valuable to combine these two capabilities in a single extensible program framework. The Cartan program makes use of interactive data-loading or data-synthesis, data-fitting and data-presentation ideas and employs Java and Swing software technologies to support many of the x-y (CARTesian-ANalysis) data manipulation techniques familiar to experimental scientists. A particular feature of the program is its inbuilt and interactive use of first-order calculus methods to track the propagation of data uncertainties alongside the independent and dependent variables themselves. The program was originally intended as a teaching aid but can be used as a science productivity tool. A discussion of the code design and architecture is given alongwith a review of ideas on data formats, data parsing and the management and parameter and model estimation issues. Some ideas on how to extend such a framework to handle project-specific data models and formats are also presented.
Keywords: x-y data; model fitting; plotting; error abalysis; data uncertainties; interactive models.
Full Document Text: PDF version.
Citation Information:
BiBTeX reference:
@techreport{CSTN-062,
title="Cartan - A Program for Interactive Model Fitting, Error Analysis and Visualisation",
author="K.A.Hawick",
year="2010",
month="October",
series="CSTN-062",
institution="Information and Mathematical Sciences, Massey University",
address="Albany, North Shore 102-904, Auckland, New Zealand"
}
Plain bibitem entry:
\bibitem{CSTN-062}
K.A.Hawick, Cartan - A Program for Interactive Model Fitting, Error Analysis and Visualisation,
Computational Science Technical Note CSTN-062, Information and Mathematical Sciences,
Massey University, Albany, North Shore 102-904, Auckland, New Zealand, October 2010.