Tools for programming in applied statistics

A general-purpose programming language (chosen to be Python) and a statistics and graphics package (chosen to be ROOT) are essential to any serious course on applied statistics, as we will be using it for all data analysis. Some of the analyses involved is hard/impossible to do using less powerfull programming languages (e.g. matlab).

Python Python is a popular high-level general-purpose programming language. It emphasizes code readability and easy development, and its usage has been growing in recent years.
We recommend Python 2.7.X in this course (latest: X=12).

ROOT ROOT is a software library (developed at CERN), which enables fast and easy reading of data, advanced stastistical analysis, model fitting, and graphical output of results. ROOT is written in C++, but it contains a python module which makes it usable in/from python.
We recommend ROOT 5.34.X for this course (latest: X=36).

Note: Don't worry if you are not able to get it all working yourself. We will figure it out during the Python/ROOT setup intro day the 16th of November, 10:15 in Auditorium M.
However, as it happens, "Anaconda" does not play well with ROOT, and so our one overall recommendation is to de-install Anaconda, before installing ROOT.

Installation instructions:

Below are installation instructions for various major operating systems:
Linux: Installation on Linux.
Windows: Installation on Windows.
Mac OS X: Installation on Mac OS X.