Everything you wanted to know about Data Analysis and Fitting but were afraid to ask

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive, pedagogical overview for physicists on data averaging and fitting techniques, including derivations and assumptions, aimed at clarifying the underlying concepts and methods.

Contribution

It offers an expanded, detailed set of lecture notes that clarify data analysis and fitting procedures with derivations, tailored for physicists.

Findings

Clear explanation of data averaging methods

Derivation of fitting formulas and assumptions

Educational resource for computational physics

Abstract

These notes discuss, in a style intended for physicists, how to average data and fit it to some functional form. I try to make clear what is being calculated, what assumptions are being made, and to give a derivation of results rather than just quote them. The aim is put a lot useful pedagogical material together in a convenient place. This manuscript is a substantial enlargement of lecture notes I prepared for the Bad Honnef School on "Efficient Algorithms in Computational Physics", September 10-14, 2012.