Physics and Engineering of Radiation Detection

586 Chapter 10. Software for Data Analysis

Figure 10.1.14: Straight line fit

of the data.

10.1.B Origin

Origin^1 is an easy-to-use and a very versatile data analysis package developed by
OriginLab Corporation. One of its attractive features is its ability to produce
production and presentation quality graphics. But perhaps its strongest point is its
use of well tested numerical algorithms from Numerical Algorithms Group (NAG).
These algorithms and their C libraries have been independently developed and tested
by the NAG and are known to produce dependable results. Origin provides access
to these libraries from not only the simple menu driven point-and-click commands
but also through its own C language called Origin C. This slightly modified form
of ANSI C language includes some features of C++ as well. Its compiler has been
built to fully recognize ANSI C and therefore a user can choose to write code in
simple C and still be able to call NAG routines.
Following are some examples of the types of analysis performed through NAG
data analysis routines in Origin.

Descriptive statistics

Correlation analysis

Regression analysis

Interpolation

Curve fitting

Surface fitting

Nonparametric statistics

Fourier transformation

(^1) Origin is a registered trademark of OriginLab Corporation.