PAN Features

PAN: Peak Analysis
A general-purpose curve fitting utility with a graphical user interface

What is PAN?
PAN Feature Summary
PAN News
How do I get PAN to read in my data?
PAN controls
Data analysis example
Submit your own function to include in PAN
Download PAN
Disclaimer
Acknowledgments

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What is PAN?
PAN is a general-purpose curve-fitting utility with a graphical user interface written in IDL. This means that you must have IDL running on your computer to run PAN. I wrote PAN using IDL v5.4 but it might work ok on earlier versions of IDL. You can use PAN to fit your ASCII data to any one of a library of fit functions and/or type in your own custom fit function. There is no limit to the number of functions to which you can fit your data but more functions result in more computation time.

PAN was written such that the amount of typing done by the user (in entering initial parameter guesses, for instance) is minimized. This was accomplished largely through the use of IDL’s sophisticated API toolkit. One of the features of this program is that the user can select a function from the built-in library and use the mouse to specify amplitude, position and width, all with a few mouse clicks.

The version of PAN discussed on this web site is slightly different from the one found in the DAVE distribution. In that distribution, which is a stand-alone executable, PAN has some more functionality specifically relevant to neutron scatterers such as the incorporation of the instrumental resolution function in fitting spectra.
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PAN Features

Library of fit functions from which to choose (Gaussian, Lorentzians, lognormal, sloping background)
Use the mouse for interactive initial parameter entry
Automatically fit multiple groups to the same model
Plot group dependence of fit parameters
Define, save, and restore your own function to be used in the fitting
Save/restore fits
Constrain parameters: upper/lower bounds
Tie parameters
Fix parameters
Specify number of fit iterations
Interrupt/resume fitting
Postscript and JPEG output of fits and fit parameters
Create a web page (HTML) session log with output from your fitting session, adding comments where desired. Any plot created in PAN can be put into the session log.
Visualize the correlation of fit parameters in an intuitive way.
Use bootstrap Monte-Carlo to perform error estimates.

PAN News

-October 11, 2002: Posted PAN distribution and documentation to web site.
-October 12, 2002: Added capability to print screen, EISF, and parameter group dependence to a JPEG file.
-October 14, 2002: Made minor modifications. Default PS and JPEG filenames are the names of the data files. Fixed minor bug in updating the curve selection slider control. Autoscaling axes now takes into account range including error bars. Now (3-column) ascii files written out using the parameter group dependence utility and EISF utility can be read back into PAN for analysis.
-October 15, 2002: Made major change to handling fit interrupts based on a suggestion by Craig Markwardt resulting in a substantial increase in the fit speed. Also removed option to view the fits during an iteration suggested by NCNR users.
-October 18, 2002: Added ability to log your results into an HTML file. This is an undocumented feature but this functionality will be discussed in the documentation soon. Also fixed a bug associated with reading in 3-column ascii data after having analyzed grouped data.
-October 21, 2002: Users can now save and restore user-defined fit function expressions. Also added feature allowing user to rebin data. Documentation (on-line and PDF) for HTML session log added.
-October 31, 2002: Trimmed unnecessary code and removed unnecessary files.
-November 4, 2002: Fixed a bug found when adding a user-defined function.
-November 15, 2002: PAN receives an honorable mention in RSI code contest.
-January 28, 2003: Now PAN can read in tab-delimited ascii files.
-August 20, 2003: Added capability to visualize fit parameter correlations.
-May 11, 2005: Added capability to perform bootstrap Monte-Carlo error estimate.

How do I get PAN to read in my data?
Your data can come in two varieties in which PAN will read it: (a) single group or (b) multiple groups

(a).    3-column tab- or space- delimited: x,z,zerr where x is the independent variable, z is the dependent variable, and zerr is the measurement error in the dependent variable.

Example: Simple data set consisting of x, z and zerr

0.000        1.000        1.000
2.000        4.000        2.000
6.000        9.000        3.000

(b).    Grouped ASCII data: x,y,z,zerr where x and y are the independent variables, z is the dependent variable, and zerr is the measurement error in the dependent variable.

All lines that begin with a hash # are comment lines and are ignored by PAN. PAN expects the first number to appear without a hash mark to be the number of x values and the second without a hash to be the number of y values. The y values follow next and then two columns of z and zerr grouped by their y value.

Example: In this example we have 5 xvalues and 3 yvalues resulting in 15 total data (z) points. The value of z at x=-2.0 and y=1.0 is 200. The corresponding error, zerr, is 14.1.

# Number of x-values
5
# Number of y-values
3
# xvalues:
-2.0000000
-1.0000000
0.00000000
1.0000000
2.0000000
# yvalues:
0.250000
1.00000
1.75000
# Group: 0
229.00000 15.132746
451.00000 21.236761
4380.0000 66.181568
455.00000 21.330729
209.00000 14.456832
# Group: 1
200.00000 14.142136
426.00000 20.639767
3260.0000 57.096410
393.00000 19.824228
219.00000 14.798649
# Group: 2
203.00000 14.247807
320.00000 17.888544
2103.0000 45.858478
333.00000 18.248288
232.00000 15.231546

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Download PAN
In order to run PAN you must first download the PAN distribution (393 kb) and unzip it onto your computer. Wherever you unzip it, make sure that the new folders created on your computer are in your IDL path. Next type PAN at the IDL command prompt.

Download PAN documentation (PDF-351 kb)
Download PAN source code and associated files (zipped-438 kb)
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Acknowledgments
This programming effort was done primarily for DAVE, the Data Analysis and Visualization Environment, which is a software package developed at the NIST Center for Neutron Research for the reduction, visualization, and analysis of inelastic neutron scattering data. This work is based upon activities supported by the National Science Foundation under Agreement No. DMR-0086210.

I would like to acknowledge valuable contributions from David Fanning, Craig Markwardt, Ronn Kling, Mark Piper, and Michael D. Galloy. I would also like to acknowledge valuable feedback on this software from David Fanning, Zema Chowdhuri, Jeff Lynn, Matt Woodward, Paul Sokol, Alan Munter, Sungil Park, John Copley, Richard Azuah, Dan Neumann, Craig Brown, and the many users at the NIST Center for Neutron Research.

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Disclaimer
This software is provided as is without any warranty whatsoever. Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute modified or unmodified copies is granted, provided this disclaimer is included unchanged.

PAN written by

Rob Dimeo
NIST Center for Neutron Research
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8562
Gaithersburg, MD 20899