10.1. Standard Analysis Packages 579
Figure 10.1.3: When a ROOT file in ROOT Files location is clicked twice, the
TBrowser expands it into its constituents. The figure here shows a ROOT file
consisting of a number of histogram objects.
A.3 Data Analysis Capabilities
Since ROOT has been specifically designed to address the needs of high energy
physicists, therefore its libraries are geared towards the respective analyses and
methods. However this does not in any way limits the utility of ROOT in other
fields. The reason is that most of the methods adapted in high energy physics
analyses can be applied to other fields as well. An obvious example is curve fitting,
which is often required to model experimental data.
The main difference between ROOT and other analysis software is that ROOT
provides the user with a framework on which a complete custom analysis package
can be designed. This feature comes handy when designing a large scale analysis
package that is intended to handle very large datasets. That is why ROOT is
generally preferred in high energy physics experiments where immense amounts of
data have to be analyzed.
At present ROOT has almost all the commonly used statistical analysis methods
built into it. This includes correlation and curve fitting routines as well. ROOT also
has a very efficient matrix manipulation library.
A.4 Graphics Capabilities
ROOT has very strong data visualization capabilities. Different types of one and
two dimensional graphing functions are available, which produce publication quality