ROOT Version 5.24/00 Release Notes


ROOT version 5.24/00 will be released end of June 2009. In case you are upgrading from an old version, please read the releases notes of version 5.16, 5.18, 5.20 and version 5.22 in addition to these notes.

Binaries for all supported platforms are available at:

      http://root.cern.ch/root/Version524.html
Versions for AFS have also been updated. See the list of supported platforms:
      http://root.cern.ch/Welcome.html

For more information, see:

      http://root.cern.ch

The following people have contributed to this new version:
Kevin Belasco, N/A, Princeton University for MCMC,
Bertrand Bellenot, CERN/SFT,
Rene Brun, CERN/SFT,
Philippe Canal, FNAL,
Or Cohen, CERN & Weizmann, TMVA
Olivier Couet, CERN/SFT,
Kyle Cranmer, NYU/Atlas, RooStats
Dominik Dannheim, MPI-Munich/Atlas, TMVA
Valeri Fine, BNL/STAR,
Fabrizio Furano, CERN/IT,
Gerri Ganis, CERN/SFT,
Andrei Gheata, CERN/Alice,
Mihaela Gheata, CERN/Alice,
David Gonzalez Maline, CERN/SFT,
Roberto Gracia Del Baño, Universidad de Valencia, recorder,
Andreas Hoecker, CERN/Atlas, TMVA
Jan Iwaszkiewicz, CERN,
Lukasz Janyst, CERN/IT,
Anna Kreshuk, GSI,
Wim Lavrijsen, LBNL, PyRoot
Alfio Lazzaro, Milano/AtlasMinuit
George Lewis, New York University/Atlas for SPlot,
Josef Leydold, TU Vienna, Unuran
Sergei Linev, GSI,
Johan Lundberg, CERN/Atlas, class TRolke
Anar Manafov, GSI,
Lorenzo Moneta, CERN/SFT,
Axel Naumann, CERN/SFT,
Eddy Offermann, Renaissance,
Katerina Opocenska, Charles University of Prague, recorder,
Rustem Ospanov, CERN/Atlas, TMVA
Mario Pelliccioni, Turin/CMS, RooStats
Timur Pocheptsov, JINR/Dubna,
Fons Rademakers, CERN/SFT,
Paul Russo, FNAL,
Manuel Schiller, Heidelberg/LHCb, SMatrix,
Gregory Schott, Karlsruhe/CMS, RooStats
Stefan Schmitt, DESY, TUnfold
Peter Speckmayer, CERN/Atlas, TMVA
Joerg Stelzer, DESY/Atlas, TMVA
Matthew Strait, umn.edu, doc
Alja Tadel, CERN/CMS, Eve
Matevz Tadel, CERN/Alice, Eve
Jan Therhaag, Bonn/Atlas, TMVA
Eckhard von Toerne, Bonn/Atlas, TMVA
Wouter Verkerke, NIKHEF/Atlas, RooFit
Alexander Voigt, Dresden/Atlas, TMVA
Helge Voss, MPI-K-Heidelberg/Atlas, TMVA
Andrzej Zemlja, IFJ-Krakow/Atlas



Core

Meta

ACLiC



I/O



Networking

Bonjour Support

New Zero-Configuration networking classes using Bonjour:

Zeroconf is meant to solve the problem of finding services and connecting to them. Instead of having to know a machine's IP address and port number for the service, a machine offering a service simply announces that it offers the service. Clients who want to use a service ask for all the machines that are offering it and then the user decides which one to connect to.

Traditionally, you would have to make sure that each machine is configured correctly and on the network. Zeroconf takes care of all of this for you for a local area network. Lots of new hardware, such as printers with networking support or wireless routers, come with their own Zeroconf server to allow easy network configuration. On Mac OS X, many applications take advantage of Bonjour to advertise services, such as the ssh server, iTunes shares, or iChat availability. Zeroconf is a powerful way of simplifying your applications, and there are implementations available for most operating systems.

If you have Mac OS X, you already have Bonjour installed; otherwise, you can download the source code from the Apple website (http://developer.apple.com/Bonjour) and build and install Bonjour in relatively short order. Most modern Linux distributions come with Avahi, an LGPL implementation of Zeroconf with a compatibibility API for Bonjour. The ROOT Bonjour classes were tested to work with both Apple's Bonjour implementation and Avahi's Bonjour compatibility layer.

Service discovery consists of three steps: registering a service, browsing for available services, and resolving the service to an actual address. A server will register its services with the Bonjour daemon. Clients will browse for services to get a list to provide to the user. Finally, when it is time to connect to a service, the client will resolve the selected service to an actual IP address and port and then connect to the service provide using TCP/IP.

XROOTD



SQL



Tree

Parallel Coordinates



PROOF



Histogram package

TPaletteAxis

TAxis

TGraph

TH1

TH2

TH3

TProfile, TProfile2D, TProfile3D

THnSparse

THistPainter

TGraphPainter

TUnfold

Fitting Methods

FitPanel



CINT

This version contains no major new features. CINT7 has seen considerable speed improvements; only bug fixes were incorporated in the other packages. CINT5 or 7 can now be configured independently; --enable-cint5 --disable-cint7 is the default. New web site for ROOT's interpreters and dictionaries and stand-alone CINT as well as Reflex.



PyROOT

Null-pointers now carry type, rather than being the None object, to make sure that correct overloads are selected. Memory policy is settable on individual functions, rather than only globally, through the _mempolicy data member that functions carry.

In order to support PyPy analysis of PyROOT code, getter/setter methods have been added to the proxies. The pydoc tool already benefits from this, since PyROOT objects are now a bit easier to inspect by such standard tools

By short-circuiting some paths during class proxy creation, loading of the libPyROOT module is now faster.



Math Libraries


MathCore

MathMore

SMatrix

Minuit

Minuit2

Unuran

Add constructor of Tunuran distributions using function objects defined using the mathcore interfaces:

TRolke

New version of TRolke from J. Lundberg.

RooFit

This release of ROOT contains RooFit version 3.00. A summary of new features is listed below

RooFit Web documentation moved to ROOT web site

The starting point for online RooFit documentation (Users Manual, tutorials, slides etc) is now moved to the ROOT website

http://root.cern.ch/drupal/content/roofit

Error visualization

It is now possible to visualize the effect of the uncertainties on parameters from a fit on any p.d.f. or function projection. To do so use the new VisualizeError() argument in a plotOn call
    RooFitResult* fr = pdf->fitTo(*data,Save(),...) ;
    pdf->plotOn(frame,VisualizeError(*fr),...) ;
Two techniques for error visualization are implemented. The default is linear error progation, and results in an error band that is by construction symmetric. The linear error is calculated as

   error(x) = Z* F_a(x) * Corr(a,a') F_a'(x)
  
   where     F_a(x) = [ f(x,a+da) - f(x,a-da) ] / 2,
  
           with f(x) = the plotted curve
                'da' = error taken from the fit result
          Corr(a,a') = the correlation matrix from the fit result
                  Z = requested significance 'Z sigma band'
  
The linear method is fast (requires 2*N evaluations of the curve, where N is the number of parameters), but may not be accurate in the presence of strong correlations (~>0.9) and at Z>2 due to linear and Gaussian approximations made.

Alternatively, errors can be visualized using a sampling method. In this method a number of curves is calculated with variations of the parameter values, as sampled from a multi-variate Gaussian p.d.f. that is constructed from the fit results covariance matrix. The error(x) is determined by calculating a central interval that capture N% of the variations for each valye of x, where N% is controlled by Z (i.e. Z=1 gives N=68%). The number of sampling curves is chosen to be such that at least 100 curves are expected to be outside the N% interval. Intervals from the sampling method can be asymmetric, and may perform better in the presence of strong correlations, but may take (much) longer to calculate. The sampling method also assumes that the uncertainty on the parameters can modeled by a multi-variate Gaussian distribution.

A complete example is provided in a new tutorial macro rf610_visualerror.C, the output of which is shown below.

Graphics Output of macro rf610_visualerror

It is also possible to visualize partial errors (from a subset of the parameters), as shown above.

Binned dataset generation

A new method RooAbsPdf::generateBinned() has been implemented that samples binned datasets (RooDataHist) from any p.d.f.
   RooDataHist* data = pdf.generateBinned(x,10000) ; 
This binned generation interface samples the p.d.f. at each bin center and applies a Poisson fluctuation to each sampled value. The binning of the returned RooDataHist is controlled by the default binning associated with the observables generated. To set the number of bins in x to 200, do e.g. x.setBins(200) prior to the call to generateBinned()

The binned dataset generation method does not (yet) support the concept of prototype datasets.

New minimizer interface to Minuit2, GSLMinimizer etc...

A new minimizer interface, RooMinimizer has been added (contribution from Alfio Lazarro). The new minimizer is similar in functionality to the existing class RooMinuit, but supports the new ROOT abstract minimizer interface and supports multiple minimizer packages and algorithms through that interface.

The present interface of RooMinimizer is identical to that of RooMinuit with two extensions By default, RooMinuit is still used when RooAbsPdf::fitTo() is called, but can be overridden with a Minimizer() named argument
   // Minimization with MINUIT/MIGRAD through RooMinuit
   pdf->fitTo(data) ; 

   // Minimization with MINUIT/MIGRAD through RooMinimizer 
   pdf->fitTo(data,Minimizer("minuit")) ; 

   // Minimization with MINUIT2/MIGRAD through RooMinimizer 
   pdf->fitTo(data,Minimizer("minuit2")) ; 

   // Minimization with GSLMultiMin/conjugatefr through RooMinimizer
   pdf->fitTo(data,Minimizer("GSLMultiMin","conjugatefr")) ; 
Note that installation of GSL and the ROOT MathMore package is needed to access the GSL Minimizers and that the GSL Minimizer do not implement error analysis.

New numeric integration algorithms available

RooFit can now interface all MathCore numeric intergration algorithms. In this release ROOT::Math::AdaptiveIntegratorMultiDim, which implements the 'Genz & Malik' algorithm has been interfaced in RooAdaptiveIntegratorND and is now the default numeric integrator for numeric integrations in two or more dimensions.

This new default integrator has much improved stability and speed for relatively smooth p.d.f.s in two or three dimensions and can generally be used well for p.d.f. normalization integrals without causing MINUIT converge problems due to numeric precision issues.

In future release some more numeric integrators will be migrated to a MathCore implementation.

Interface to TFoam adaptive MC sampler added

RooFit can now use the TFoam adaptive MC sampler for event generation of p.d.f.s that do not have an internal generator. The TFoam generator adaptively subdivides the observable space and is generally more efficient both warmup and generation than the original RooAcceptReject algorithm. In its current interface in RooFit, TFoam cannot handle problems yet with discrete observables or conditional observables. For those problems the original RooAcceptReject generator is still used.

The choice of MC sampling algorithm can be steered through class RooNumGenConfig, which is similar in style and structure, to RooNumIntConfig which configures the choice of numeric integration algorithm.

A new tutorial macro rf902_numgenconfig.C has been added to $ROOTSYS/tutorials/roofit to illustrate the use of the steering.

A macro that demonstrates of the power of these newly interface numeric algorithms is provided at the end of the RooFit section of the release notes.

Optional persistent caching of numeric integrals

For p.d.f.s with numeric integrals that remain difficult or very time consuming, a new persistent caching technique is now available that allows to precalculate these integrals and store their values for future use. This technique works transparently for any p.d.f. stored in a RooWorkspace.

One can store numeric integral values for problems with zero, one or two floating parameters. In the first case, the value is simply stored. In cases with one or two floating parameters a grid (histogram) of integral values is stored, which are interpolated to return integral values for each value of the parameters.

A new tutorial macro rf903_numintcache.C has been added to $ROOTSYS/tutorials/roofit to illustrate the use of this feature.

Representation of function and p.d.f. derivatives

A new class has been added that can represent the derivative of any p.d.f or function w.r.t. any parameter or observable. To construct e.g. a first order derivative of a Gaussian p.d.f, do

    RooAbsReal* dgdx = gauss.derivative(x,1) ; 

A more complete example is available in the new tutorial macro rf111_derivatives.C

Graphics Output of macro rf111_derivatives

Improved handling of chi-squared fits

Chi-squared fits can now be performed through the same style of interface as likelihood fits, through the newly added method RooAbsReal::chi2FitTo(const RooDataHist&,...).

Functions that can be fitted with chi-squared minimization are any RooAbsReal based function as well as RooAbsPdf based p.d.f.s. In case of non-extended p.d.f.s the probability density calculated by the p.d.f. is multiplied with the number of events in the histogram to adjust the scale of the function. In case of extended p.d.f.s, the adjustment is made with the expected number of events, rather than the observed number of events. Tutorial macro rf602_chi2fit.C has been updated to use this new interface.

Chi-squared fits to X-Y datasets now possible

In addition to the ability to perform chi-squared fits to histograms it is now also possible to perform chi-squared fits to unbinned datasets containing a series of X and Y values with associated errors on Y and optionally on X.

These 'X-Y' chi-squared fits are interfaced through newly added method RooAbsReal::chi2FitTo(const RooDataSet&,...). By default the event weight is interpreted as the 'Y' value, but an YVar() argument can designate any other dataset column as Y value. If X errors are defined, one can choose to integrate the fitted function over the range of the X errors, rather than taking the central value by adding an Integrate(kTRUE) argument to chi2FitTo()

Two new arguments, StoreError(const RooArgSet&) and StoreAsymError(const RooArgSet&) have been added to the RooDataSet constructor to simplify the process of storing the errors of X and Y variables along with their values in a dataset.

The newly added tutorial macro rf609_xychi2fit.C illustrates the use of all this new functionality.

Uniform interface for creation of (profile likelihoods) and chi-squared from p.d.f.s

It is now recommended to use the method RooAbsPdf::createNLL(RooAbsData&,...) to create a likelihood from a p.d.f and a dataset rather than constructing a RooNLLVar object directly. This is because part of the likelihood construction functionality such a using multiple Range()s, or the inclusion for constraint terms are only available through createNLL().

To promote the consistency of this interface, a similar method RooAbsReal::createChi2() has been added to construct chi-squared functions of a dataset and a function or p.d.f.

Along the same lines, it is recommended to use RooAbsReal::createProfile() rather than constructing a RooProfileLL object directly as the former will efficiently recast a profile of a profile into a single profile object.

Multivariate Gaussian modeling of parameters estimates from a fit

You can now construct a multivariate Gaussian p.d.f on the parameters of a model that represents the result of a fit, from any RooFitResult object.

   RooAbsPdf* paramPdf = fitresult->createHessePdf(RooArgSet(a,b)) ;

The returned object is an instance of the newly added class RooMultiVarGaussian, that can model correlated Gaussian distributions in an arbitrary number of dimensions, given a vector of mean values and a covariance matrix. Class RooMultivarGaussian implements analytical integration as well as analytical partial integrals over the first 31 dimensions (if you have that many) and implements in effect internal generation strategy for its observables

A new tutorial macro rf608_fitresultaspdf.C has been added to illustrate the use MV Gaussians constructed from a RooFitResult

Improved functionality of RooFFTConvPdf

The FFT convolution operator p.d.f. class RooFFTConvPdf has been substantially upgraded for improved performance has several new options



Graphics Output of macro rf210_angularconv

Option for improved calculation of errors in weighted likelihood fits

A new option SumW2Error() has been added to RooAbsPdf::fitTo() that will perform an improved error calculation for weighted unbinned likelihood fits. In their unmodified form, an ML fit to a weighted dataset will correctly estimate the parameters, but the errors will scale with the sum of the weights, rather than the number of the events in the dataset (i.e. if you double all event weights, all parameter errors will go down with sqrt(2)). In chi-squared fits event weights can processed correctly by using both the sum of the weights and the sum of the weights-squared for each bin. The newly added option SumW2Error() implements a similar strategy for (unbinned) weighted ML fits by applying a correction to the covariance matrix as follows
   V' = V C-1 V
where V is the covariance matrix from the fit to weighted data, and C-1 is the inverse of the covariance matrix calculated from a similar likelihood that constructed with the event weights applied squared

Redesign of RooFit dataset class structure

The original class structure of RooFit featured an abstract dataset class RooAbsData. Inheriting from that was a single class RooTreeData, which implemented datasets with a ROOT TTree-based storage implementation, and inheriting from that two classes RooDataSet , representing unbinned data, and RooDataHist, representing binned data. A main problem with this structure was that the implementation of the storage technology (TTree) and the data representation (binned vs unbinned) were intertwined.

Starting with version 3.00, the class structure has been rearranged: Now classes RooDataSet and RooDataHist inherit directly from class RooAbsData, and class RooAbsData now owns an object that inherits from RooAbsDataStore that implements the storage of the data. This new class structure allows multiple data storage implementations to be applied efficiently to both RooDataSet and RooDataHist At present a single implementation of RooAbsDataStore exists, class RooTreeDataStore, that contains the storage implementation formerly implement in class RooTreeData. Methods in class RooTreeData that were not specific to the storage technology have been moved to class RooAbsData.

If your user code only uses the classes RooDataSet,RooDataHist and RooAbsData nothing will change: Existing RooDataSets and RooDataHists (that inherit from RooTreeData) can be read in without problems in RooFit 3.00 and will be converted on the fly to the new dataset structure in memory.

User code that explicitly uses RooTreeData pointers should be changed to RooAbsData pointers. This change should be transparent for all uses, with the exception of the RooTreeData::tree() method. Explicit access to tree implementation can still be obtained through the RooTreeDataStore::tree() method. (A pointer to the datastore can be obtained through the RooAbsData::store() method.) Note that in future releases it is no longer guaranteed that all datasets are implemented with a plain TTree implementation, so any user code that uses the tree implementation directly should implement checks that the implementation is indeed tree-based (data->store()->InheritsFrom(RooTreeDataStore::Class())==kTRUE)).

In future release additional implementations of RooAbsDataStore will be provided that will support new dataset functionality such as the ability to construct 'joint' dataset from two input datasets without the need to copy the input data and 'filtered' datasets that represent a reduced view (in dimensions or by selecting events) of a dataset without the need to copy content.

Various workspace improvements

A number of smaller and larger improvements has been made to the RooWorkspace class.

New object factory interface to workspace to facilitate script driven model definition

A object factory has been added to RooFit to simplify the proces of creating p.d.f. and function expressions consisting of multiple objects. The factory has two goals: the first is to provide a back-end for higher level factories and tools to process the creation of objects. The second is to provide a simple end-user language to populate a RooWorkspace with function and p.d.f. objects.

For the latter purpose the object creation language is executed through the factory() method of a workspace object.

   RooWorkspace w("w") ;
   RooAbsArg* arg = w.factory("expression_goes_here") ;
Basic Syntax
The rules at its simplest level are as follows Compound expressions

The real power of this language is that all these expressions may be nested to result in a compact and readable expression that creates an entire p.d.f. and its components

   "Gaussian::g(x[-10,10],m[-10,10],3)"  

Creates a RooGaussian named 'g', its observables 'x' with range [-10,10], its parameter 'm' with range [-10,10]' and a constant width of 3.

   "SUM::model( f[0.5,0,1] * Gaussian( x[-10,10], m[0], 3] ),
                             Chebychev( x, {a0[0.1],a1[0.2],a2[-0.3]}))"

Create a RooAddPdf model of a RooGaussian and a RooChebychev (which are implicitly named model_0 and model_1), its observable x and its parameters m,a0,a1,a2,Nsig and Nbkg

Note that each object may be created only once (with [] or () brackets) but may be referenced multiple times in the expression by just giving the name. Here is a much more complicated example:

  "PROD::sig(BMixDecay::sig_t( dt[-20,20], mixState[mixed=1,unmix=-1], tagFlav[B0=1,B0bar=-1],
                                             tau[1.54], dm[0.472], w[0.05], dw[0],
                                             AddModel({GaussModel(dt,biasC[-10,10],sigmaC[0.1,3],dterr[0.01,0.2]),
                                                       GaussModel(dt,0,sigmaT[3,10]),
                                                       GaussModel(dt,0,20)},{fracC[0,1],fracT[0,1]}),
                                             DoubleSided ),
             Gaussian::sig_m( mes[5.20,5.30], mB0[5.20,5.30], sigmB0[0.01,0.05] )"

This create a double-sided Bmixing decay p.d.f. with observables dt, per-event error dterr and all its parameters, convoluted with a triple gaussian resolution model and multiplied with a Gaussian p.d.f. in the energy substituted mass. (In plain RooFit this would have required at least 23 lines of code).

A series of three new tutorial macros has been added to illustrate the various features of the object factory

A formal transaction model is used to commit composite objects into the workspace. If an error is detected in the expression, no objects will be committed to the workspace, thus leaving no 'partial builds'.

Compact demo of several new major features

The macro below demonstrates in a couple of lines a number of major new features in RooFit 3.00: Use of
  void demo()  
  {
    // Construct compiled 2-D model that requires numeric integration for normalization
    RooWorkspace w("w",1) ;
    w.factory("CEXPR::model('1/((x-a)*(x-a)+0.001)+1/((y-b)*(y-b)+0.001)',x[-1,1],y[-1,1],a[-5,5],b[-5,5])") ;

    // Generate data from model (using TFoam adaptive sampling algorithm)
    RooDataSet* d = w::model.generate(RooArgSet(w::x,w::y),1000) ;
    w::model.fitTo(*d) ; 

    // Make 2D plot on (x,y)
    TH2* hh = w::model.createHistogram("x,y",40,40) ;
    hh->SetLineColor(kBlue) ;

    // Make Projection on x (integrate over y)
    RooPlot* framex = w::x.frame(Title("Data and p.d.f. projected on X")) ;
    d->plotOn(framex) ;
    w::model.plotOn(framex) ;

    // Construct likelihood, profile likelihood in a, and draw the latter
    RooAbsReal* nll = w::model.createNLL(*d,NumCPU(2)) ;
    RooAbsReal* pll = nll->createProfile(w::a) ;
    RooPlot* framea = w::a.frame(Title("Profile likelihood in parameter a")) ;
    pll->plotOn(framea) ;
  
    // Construct 2D cumulative distribution function from p.d.f.
    RooAbsReal* cdfxy = w::model.createCdf(RooArgSet(w::x,w::y),ScanNoCdf()) ;
    TH2* hhcdf = cdfxy->createHistogram("x,y",40,40) ;
    hhcdf->SetLineColor(kRed) ;

    TCanvas* c = new TCanvas("c","c",650,650) ;  c->Divide(2,2) ;
    c->cd(1) ; hh->Draw("surf") ;  c->cd(2) ; framex->Draw() ;
    c->cd(3) ; framea->Draw()   ;  c->cd(4) ; hhcdf->Draw("surf") ;
  }
Plot that results from above macro

Graphics Output of demo macro

Miscellaneous small improvements



RooStats

New Tutorials

Several new tutorials were added for RooStats

TestStatistic interface and implementations

We added a new interface class called TestStatistic. It defines the method Evaluate(data, parameterPoint), which returns a double.  This class can be used in conjunction with the ToyMCSampler class to generate sampling distributions for a user-defined test statistic.  

The following concrete implementations of the TestStatistic interface are currently available

SamplingDistribution and the TestStatSampler interface and implementations

We introduced a ``result'' or data model class called SamplingDistribution, which holds the sampling distribution of an arbitrary real valued test statistic.  The class also can return the inverse of the cumulative distribution function (with or without interpolation).  

We introduced an interface for any tool that can produce a SamplingDistribution, called TestStatSampler.  The interface is essentially GetSamplingDistribution(parameterPoint) which returns a SamplingDistribution based on a given probability density function.  We foresee a few versions of this tool based on toy Monte Carlo, importance sampling, Fourier transforms, etc.  The following concrete implementation of the TestStatSampler interface are currently available

NeymanConstruction and FeldmanCousins

A flexible framework for the Neyman Construction was added in this release. The NeymanConstruction is a concrete implementation of the IntervalCalculator interface, but it needs several additional components to be specified before use. The design factorizes the choice of the parameter points to be tested, the choice of the test statistic, and the generation of sampling distribution into separate parts (described above).  Finally, the NeymanConstruction class is simply in charge of using these parts (strategies) and constructing the confidence belt and confidence intervals.  The ConfidenceBelt class is still under development, but the current version works fine for producing ConfidenceIntervals.  We are also working to make this class work with parallelization approaches, which is not yet complete.

The FeldmanCousins class is a separate concrete implementation of the IntervalCalculator interface.  It uses the NeymanConstruction internally, and enforces specific choices of the test statistic and ordering principle to realize the Unified intervals described by Feldman and Cousins in their paper Phys.Rev.D57:3873-3889,1998.

In an extension to the technique discussed in Feldman and Cousins paper, the FeldmanCousins class also performs a "profile construction" if their are nuisance parameters. In this case, the parameters of interest are scanned in a regular grid. For each point in the grid the calculator finds the best fit value of the nuisance parameters (given the data). The construction is then only performed in this subspace of the parameters. As a result, the number of points in the construction only scales in the number of parameters of interest, not in the number of nuisance parameters.

Markov Chain Monte Carlo Interval

A flexible framework for Markov Chain Monte Carlo was added in this release. The MCMCCalculator is a concrete implementation of the IntervalCalculator interface. To use it one needs to specify the ProposalFunction. There is a base class for ProposalFunctions and one concrete implementation: UniformProposal. Support for other proposal functions will be added in the next release. The MCMCCalculator scans the space of the parameters of interest and nuisance parameters and produces a Bayesian posterior. In this version, the prior must be added to the model initially, otherwise a flat prior is assumed. The MCMCCalculator returns an MCMCInterval, which produces the smallest interval by taking a contour of the posterior. This first version only supports 1,2, and 3 dimensional intervals, but will be generalized in the next release.

In addition to the MCMC implementation in RooStats, one can export their model and dataset into a workspace, and then use the Bayesian Analysis Toolkit (BAT) for the MCMC. There is a wrapper available.

Redesigned SPlot class

The RooStats SPlot implementation works with any RooAbsPdf. The class has been redesigned for more convenient use. It also adds some helper functions to check that the sum of sWeights over species is 1 for each event and the sum over events for a given species equals the yield for that species.

Plotting classes

We have added new plotting classes: SamplingDistPlot and LikelihoodIntervalPlot. In 1-d LikelihoodIntervalPlot shows the profile likelihood ratio and the upper/lower limits of the interval for the parameter of interest. In 2-d, the LikelihoodIntervalPlot shows the contour of the profile likelihood ratio for the parameters of interest.

Bernstein Correction

BernsteinCorrection is a utility in RooStats to augment a nominal PDF with a polynomial  correction term.  This is useful for incorporating systematic variations to the nominal PDF.   The Bernstein basis polynomails are particularly appropriate because they are positive definite. 

This tool was inspired by the work of Glen Cowan together with Stephan Horner, Sascha Caron,  Eilam Gross, and others.   The initial implementation is independent work.  The major step forward in the approach was  to provide a well defined algorithm that specifies the order of polynomial to be included  in the correction.  This is an emperical algorithm, so in addition to the nominal model it  needs either a real data set or a simulated one.  In the early work, the nominal model was taken to be a histogram from Monte Carlo simulations, but in this implementation it is generalized to an arbitrary PDF (which includes a RooHistPdf).  The algorithm basically consists of a  hypothesis test of an nth-order correction (null) against a n+1-th order correction (alternate).  The quantity q = -2 log LR is used to determine whether the n+1-th order correction is a major  improvement to the n-th order correction.  The distribution of q is expected to be roughly  \chi^2 with one degree of freedom if the n-th order correction is a good model for the data.   Thus, one only moves to the n+1-th order correction of q is relatively large.  The chance that  one moves from the n-th to the n+1-th order correction when the n-th order correction  (eg. a type 1 error) is sufficient is given by the Prob(\chi^2_1 > threshold).  The constructor  of this class allows you to directly set this tolerance (in terms of probability that the n+1-th  term is added unnecessarily).

HybridCalculator

Add as a new test statistics the profile likelihood ratio. Will be redesigned to use TestStatSampler and TestStatistic in next release.



TMVA

TMVA version 4.0.1 is included in this root release:

Main changes and new features introduced with TMVA 4

Comments

On XML format:
The old text format is obsolete though still readable in the application. Backward compatibility is NOT guaranteed. Please contact the authors if you require the reading of old text weight files in TMVA 4.

Standard macros:
The structure of the standard macros has changed: macros are still in the "$ROOTSYS/tmva/test" directory, but distinguished for classification and regression examples:

TMVAClassification.C, TMVAClassificationApplication.C TMVARegression.C, TMVARegressionApplication.C
Classification and regression analysis (training) is analysed as usual via standard macros that can be called from dedicated GUIs.

Regression:

Improvements of / new features for MVA methods

  • Linear Discriminant: Re-implementation of "Fisher" method as general linear discriminant ("LD"), which is also regression capable (so far: single-target only)
  • PDEFoam: PDE-Foam is a variation of the PDE-RS method using a self-adapting binning method to divide the multi-dimensional variable space into a finite number of hyper-rectangles (cells). The binning algorithm adjusts the size and position of a predefined number of cells such that the variance of the signal and background densities inside the cells reaches a minimum.
  • BDT: Introduced gradient boosting and stochastic gradient boosting for classification with BDT (as desribed by Friedman 1999). See "BDTG" example in TMVAClassification.C/cxx. A new option allows to restrict the maximum tree depth. This may be used to avoid overtraining and often gives better performance than pruning. (The pruning mechanism needs to be revisited)
  • MLP: Introduced recognition of convergence via general ConvergenceTest-class for interrupting computations when convergence is reached. This feature has is used now in MethodMLP. Improved treatment of event-weights in BFGS training. Implemented random and importance sampling of events in DataSet. Implemented the usage of this feature for MLP.
  • TMlpANN (interface to TMultiLayerPerceptron) now also uses event weights and writes standalone C++ class.
  • k-NN: A new global knn search function has been added to NodekNN that searches for k-nearest neighbor using event weights instead of raw event counts. ModulekNN has been modified to allow searches using "weight" or "count" option, where "count" is default. Added UseWeight option to MethodKNN to allow using of "weight" or "count". (Work by Rustem Ospanov, CERN).
  • Likelihood (and general PDF treatment): Adaptive smoothing the PDF class, allowing it to smooth between MinSmoothNum (for regions with more signal) and MaxSmoothNum (for regions with less signal). Configuration of the PDF parameters from the option string moved to PDF class, allowing the user to define all the PDF functionalities in every classifier the PDF is used (i.e., also for the MVA PDFs). The reading of these variables was removed from MethodBase and MethodLikelihood. This also allows improved (full) PDF configuration of MVA output via the "CreateMvaPdf" option. (Work by Or Cohen, CERN & Weizmann)
  • New generalisation methods:
  • Other improvements

    Updates in TMVA 4.0.1

    Bug fixes:


    Geometry



    MonteCarlo



    GUI

    TRootCanvas

    TRootContextMenu

    TGMenu

    TGSlider

    New Browser



    GUIHTML

    TGHtmlBrowser



    Graphical Output

    TASImage / libAfterImage

    PostScript and PDF

    TLegend

    TGaxis

    TCrown

    TLatex

    TCanvas

    QtRoot/ libGQt



    OpenGL

    Major changes

    Minor changes, fixes and improvements



    Eve



    Misc

    Quick Look plugin for MacOS X

    New Quick Look plugin that allows quick inspection of the content of a ROOT file.

    Quick Look is available on MacOS X since version 10.5 (Leopard). To use QL select an file icon in the Finder and hit the space bar. For all file types supported by QL you will get a window showing the file content, for file types not supported you will get a generic window showing some basic file info.

    The idea of QL is that file content can be shown without the heavy application startup process. Generating a QL view of a ROOT file depends on the size of the file, but generally it is a quick operation.

    Get the binary for the ROOTQL plugin from:

       ftp://root.cern.ch/root/ROOTQL.tgz
    

    To install the plugin, after untarring the above file, just drag the bundle ROOTQL.qlgenerator to /Library/QuickLook (global, i.e. for all users on a system) or to ~/Library/QuickLook (local, this user only) directory. You may need to create that folder if it doesn't already exist.

    To build from source, get it from svn using:

       svn co http://root.cern.ch/svn/root/trunk/misc/rootql rootql
    

    Open the ROOTQL project in Xcode and click on "Build" (make sure the Active Build Configuration is set the "Release"). Copy the resulting plugin from build/Release to the desired QuickLook directory.

    SpotLight plugin for MacOS X

    This is a Spotlight plugin that allows ROOT files to be indexed by SL. Once indexed SL can find ROOT files based on the names and titles of the objects in the files.

    Spotlight is available on MacOS X since version 10.4 (Tiger). To use SL select the SL icon on the top right of the menubar and type in a search text.

    Get the binary for the ROOTSL plugin from:

       ftp://root.cern.ch/root/ROOTSL.tgz
    

    To install the plugin, after untarring the above file, just drag the bundle ROOTSL.mdimporter to /Library/Spotlight (global, i.e. for all users on a system) or to ~/Library/Spotlight (local, this user only) directory. You may need to create that folder if it doesn't already exist.

    To build from source, get it from svn using:

       svn co http://root.cern.ch/svn/root/trunk/misc/rootsl rootsl
    

    Open the ROOTSL project in Xcode and click on "Build" (make sure the Active Build Configuration is set the "Release"). Copy the resulting plugin from build/Release to the desired QuickLook directory.


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