Once a year, at Nevis, I give an all-day hands-on tutorial on the Nevis computer systems and on ROOT to the REU students (and anyone else at Nevis who's interested). I assume that these students have little or no experience with ROOT, UNIX, C++, histograms, or statistics (I have a separate page with references to these topics). My goal is to enable them to make histograms from n-tuples that other people create for them.

I've revised the course somewhat over the years. The instructional materials for all the past tutorials are listed below, with the most recent year first.

If you want to go through the tutorial yourself, please note that the first few pages are very Nevis-centric. But after you get through the parts about how to login to a Nevis system and set up ROOT, the tutorial becomes general (except for copying files from my home directory; you can find those files here).

The 2009 class (03-Jun-2009)
• In 2009, I modified the course materials for ROOT 5.22/00. The class was expanded to a two-day workshop, with additional exercises that reflect typical physics analysis tasks.

  Here is the 2009 hands-on tutorial, in PDF format (648K). Some additional files are required for the tutorial.

  For the convenience of the students, here are PDF files of slides I displayed on Nevis Systems (112K) and the purpose of ROOT (408K).

  
  The 2008 class (04-Jun-2008)

• In 2008, I slightly modified the course materials for ROOT 5.18/00.

  Here is the 2008 hands-on tutorial, in PDF format (660K). The files required for the tutorial are in my FTP area.

  For the convenience of the students, here are PDF files of slides I displayed on Nevis Systems (100K) and the purpose of ROOT (356K).

  
  The 2007 class (31-May-2007)

• In 2007, I modified the course materials for ROOT 5.14/00. This version of ROOT took a couple of steps backwards in the "simple GUI" features of the package, notably the FitPanel.

  Here is the 2007 hands-on tutorial, in PDF format (513K). The files required for the tutorial are in my FTP area.

  For the convenience of the students, here are PDF files of slides I displayed on Nevis Systems (96K) and the purpose of ROOT (243K).

  
  The 2006 class (01-Jun-2006)

• In 2006, I modified the course materials due to changes in the Linux cluster at Nevis, and for ROOT 5.10/00.

  Here is the 2006 hands-on tutorial, in PDF format (798K). The files required for the tutorial are still in my FTP area, with slight changes from previous years (solely in the comments).

  For the convenience of the students, here are PDF files of slides I displayed on Nevis Systems (386K) and the purpose of ROOT (424K).

  
  The 2005 class (02-Jun-2005)

• In 2005, I adjusted the class slightly due to a new version of ROOT. I also emphasized how to "clean up" a plot for publication, and added an exercise to write a stand-alone ROOT program.

  Here is the 2005 hands-on tutorial, in PDF format (259K). The files required for the tutorial are still in my FTP area, and are unchanged from previous years.

  For the convenience of the students, here are PDF files of slides I displayed on Nevis Systems (44K) and the purpose of ROOT (142K).

  
  The 2004 class (03-Jun-2004)

• In 2004, I extended the class somewhat to re-introduce the TreeViewer as a tool for analyzing n-tuples -- primarily because the students finished the class too quickly in previous years. (Actually, most of them still finished the class too quickly in 2004; I should think of an addition to the tutorial to challenge them further.)

  Here is the 2004 hands-on tutorial in PDF (250K). The files required for the tutorial are still in my FTP area, and are unchanged from previous years.

  
  The 2002 class (07-Jun-2002)

• In 2002, I revised the ROOT class to de-emphasize the use of the GUI to analyze n-tuples, and to concentrate on writing analysis macros instead. (This approach better fits what the students do during the summer.)

  Here is the 2002 hands-on tutorial, in PDF (144K). The files required for the 2002 tutorial are still in my FTP area.

  
  Revised tutorial (02-Aug-2001)

• On the basis of the students' initial reaction and problems encountered during the original class, I revised the original tutorial. Note that this still a Nevis-centric course; in particular, the command(s) to set up ROOT will almost certainly be different in other computing environments.

  Here is the revised hands-on tutorial in PDF (251K).

  
  Original tutorial (07-Jun-2001)

• Here are the materials from the first tutorial, given on 06-Jun-2001.

  • My presentation on Nevis computing in PDF (52K).

  • My introduction to the hands-on ROOT tutorial in PDF (189K).

  • The hands-on ROOT tutorial itself in PDF (234K). This is the original material I gave to the students, without any of their suggested changes.

  
  Tutorial files (07-Jun-2001)

• If you want to run the commands in the tutorials yourself, you'll need some files. I've copied the relevant files from ~seligman/root-class/ to my FTP site. Note that if you visit the FTP area with a web browser, you probably want to download the files by shift-clicking on the file names; if you just click on them, you'll display their contents in your browser window.

For other ROOT tutorials, consult the ROOT Publications page.