[yt-users] Profiles and normal graphs

[Brian O'Shea]

The term profile is usually short for radial profile.  Making a radial
profile starts by choosing some point in the simulation box, then
placing the grid cells into groups based on their distance away from
that point.  In essence, each group of cells represents a spherical
shell of some thickness.  Once we have the cells in groups, then we
take the average of a certain quantity, say density or temperature, in
each of those groups.  Then, what we have is simply the average value
of some quantity as a function of distance away from the central
point.  Examples of radial profiles made from Enzo simulation data can
be seen in this paper:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007ApJ...654...66O (figure 4, for
example).

A graph, on the other hand, isn't really anything in particular.
There are many ways to visualize data from simulations, and making
radial profiles is just one of them.  I encourage you to check out the
YT analysis toolkit (yt.enzotools.org) for various other ways of
looking at your data.  Different problems are better visualized in
different ways.  Perhaps if you explain what type of problem you're
working on, we can give you some direction.

Cheers,

Britton

On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 8:46 PM, rsoares <dlleuz at xmission.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> What's the difference b/t a "density profile" or  "temperature
> profile" etc and just a basic density graph, temperature graph, etc?
>
> (Cosmological simulations).
>
> Is a profile a graph over a chunk of space which is 2-dimensional plus
> width-not-too-small /large, whereas a graph is just a 2-dimensional
> plot, y vs. x, say.
>
> Is this chunk what is called a slab, in numerical simulations?
>
> And how does a spherically-average profile differ from a chunk or slab
> profile?
>
>
> Thanks.
> -R.Soares
> _______________________________________________
> yt-users mailing list
> yt-users at lists.spacepope.org
> http://lists.spacepope.org/listinfo.cgi/yt-users-spacepope.org
>