Common signal processing tasks in the numerical handling of experimental data include interpolation, smoothing, and propagation of uncertainty. A comparison of experimental results to a theoretical model further requires curve fitting, the plotting of functions and data,  and a determination of the goodness of fit. These tasks often typically require an interactive, exploratory approach to the data, yet for the results to be reliable, the original data needs to be freely available and resulting analysis readily reproducible. In this article, we provide examples of how to use the Numerical Python (Numpy) and Scientific Python (SciPy) packages and interactive Jupyter Notebooks to accomplish these goals for data stored in a common plain text spreadsheet format. Sample Jupyter notebooks containing the Python code used to carry out these tasks are included and can be used as templates for the analysis of new data. 

This document was originally posted July 25, 2013 at Uses This and is distributed under a CCBY-SA 4.0 license.Who are you, and what do you do?I'm a mathematical physicist who works at U.C. Riverside and also the Center of Quantum Technologies, in Singapore. I used to work on quantum gravity and the foundations of physics, but lately I've gotten interested in environmental issues, like what to do about global warming. I've been called the world's first blogger, which sounds great, or a "proto-blogger", which makes me sound like a caveman.

This document was originally posted September 10, 2015 at Uses This and is distributed under a CCBY-SA 4.0 license.Who are you, and what do you do?I'm Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, theoretical cosmologist, currently the Martin Luther King Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physics at M.I.T. This means that I do a lot of reading and calculus in the hopes that I can figure out how the universe evolved and what most of the matter and energy content in it is made of. I think of myself as a theoretical physicist because quantum field theory is pretty foundational to my day to day work, but I also have degrees in astronomy and my work intersects with astrophysical research.

This document was originally posted December 15, 2017 at Uses This and is distributed under a CCBY-SA 4.0 license.Who are you, and what do you do?My name is Hervé This von Kientzheim. I'm an Alsatian physical chemist, in exile in Paris (because ich habe mein Herz in Kientzheim verloren) and my research is "molecular gastronomy", a scientific discipline that I created in 1988 with my old friend Nicholas Kurti. I have to add that contrary to a misconception, molecular gastronomy is not cooking, but a scientific activity, and more precisely, a science of nature (opposed to sciences of human and societies).

This document was originally posted January 21, 2016 at Uses This and is distributed under a CCBY-SA 4.0 license.Who are you, and what do you do?My name is Matthew Borgatti. I'm the lead scientist at the soft robotics R&D lab Super-Releaser. I build robots out of unusual materials like RTV casting silicone and seamless stretch knits to produce analogues of biological mechanisms. The overall goal is to turn ideas on how to solve engineering problems, like interfacing mechanisms with the human body and mass producing robots with complex motion, into practical technologies.

This document was originally posted August 04, 2016 at Uses This and is distributed under a CCBY-SA 4.0 license.Who are you, and what do you do?I'm Ross Goodwin, and I'm a creative technologist, artist, hacker, data scientist, and recent graduate of NYU ITP. I am passionate about developing new forms and interfaces for written language, enabled by technology, and machine intelligence in particular. I've written two (rather long) essays about my recent experiments with writing and machine learning, which can be found here: I, II.

This document was originally posted September 07, 2017 at Uses This and is distributed under a CCBY-SA 4.0 license.