IPython Notebook

The IPython Notebook provides a rich interface where to store notes, code and results. Since it natively runs Python it is a good candidate for analyzing the data collected by the CMS experiment. For more information on the IPython Notebook see the official page.

ROOT already provides Python bindings (called Pyroot) and it can be integrated in the notebook.

Furthermore, the CMS software itself (CMSSW) can be integrated in the notebook. FWLite has Python bindings that can be used to streamline the analysis of official dataformats (anything from GEN to PAT).

I integrated the IPython Notebook with ROOT and CMSSW to allow analyzing CMS data from its rich web interface.

The setup has been presented at the CMS Data Analysis School (CMSDAS) in India (November 2013) and in a Hands On Tutorial (HATS) at the LPC in Fermilab (November 20). A TWiki was setup: and servers were provided to the students.

The collection of notebooks for the exercise is available on github under HATS_2013 and they cover the following topics (with links to the notebooks on nbviewer):