They're on theur way back to Vicksburg. I yried to guide them from home but couldn't figure out where she was. By 230, she hung it up and turned back --------- Message sent via my BlackBerry Wireless Device ----- Original Message ----- From: ifeffit-bounces@millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov To: XAFS Analysis using Ifeffit Sent: Sat Apr 18 12:57:18 2009 Subject: Re: [Ifeffit] Fitting procedure Hi Adam, I am confused by this thread too! As you say, the original issue involved using S02 for individual shells of data on Cu foil. Of course, having separate S02 for each shell is not usually necessary to model Cu foil -- in fact I can't think of a case where it is needed. But since S02 is 100% with N, and ~95% correlated with sigma2, it is easy to have S02 vary per shell if one allows it to happen. Whether that's a good idea or not depends on how you interpret the results. Most people choose to fix a single S02 and vary N. Lots of people fit spectra with one S02 and an N for each shell, so I don't think the number of free parameters is necessarily a big issue. In a follow-up message, Scott seemed (to me) to be more concerned about whether it was reasonable to "fix parameters for the first shell" when fitting a second or higher shells, not so much with the issue of what parameters were being refined. There weren't explicit details on what was fixed or what fitting ranges or parameters were used for the higher shells. Scott suggested (I believe) that "fixing the first shell" and fitting the second shell was not a good idea, and asked to hear differing views. I find the approach of "fit the first shell, then fix those parameters and fit the second shell" to be a reasonable way to start, so I responded. I would not call this approach "acceptable, but generally not preferred" -- I would say it has actual merit. Yes, it is often a good idea to check a fit to the whole spectrum toward the end of an analysis. But in a fit to the whole spectrum, the quality of the fit to the more subtle features (the finer structure) can often get lost in the fit to the more dominant features of the spectra. That is why we subtract mu0(E), after all. I don't see Fourier filtering as a bad idea for analyzing higher shells. But perhaps I am just not understanding what Scott and Shelly recommend??? --Matt _______________________________________________ Ifeffit mailing list Ifeffit@millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov http://millenia.cars.aps.anl.gov/mailman/listinfo/ifeffit