About
The Scikit-HEP project (HEP stands for High Energy Physics, see more in the FAQ) is a community-driven and community-oriented project with the aim of providing Particle Physics at large with an ecosystem for data analysis in Python. The project started in Autumn 2016 and is in full swing.
It is not just about providing core and common tools for the community. It is also about improving the interoperability between HEP tools and the scientific ecosystem in Python, and about improving on discoverability of utility packages and projects.
For what concerns the project grand structure, it should be seen as a toolset rather than a toolkit. The project defines a set of five pillars, which are seen to embrace all major topics involved in a physicist's work. These are:
- Datasets: data in various sources, such as ROOT, NumPy/Pandas, databases, wrapped in a common interface.
- Aggregations: e.g. histograms that summarize or project a dataset.
- Modeling: data models and fitting utilities.
- Simulation: wrappers for Monte Carlo engines and other generators of simulated data.
- Visualization: interface to graphics engines, from ROOT and Matplotlib to even beyond.