Tutorials

These are step-by-step guides you can follow to show you what PINT can do. Quick common tasks are explained on the PINT Wiki. If you want some explanations of why things work this way, see the Explanation section. If you want details on a particular function that comes up, see the Reference section. More complicated tasks are discussed in the How-tos.

Data Files

The data files (par and tim) associated with the tutorials and other examples can be located via pint.config.examplefile() (available via the pint.config module):

import pint.config
fullfilename = pint.config.examplefile(filename)

For example, the file NGC6440E.par from the Time a Pulsar notebook can be found via:

import pint
fullfilename = pint.config.examplefile("NGC6440E.par")

Examples

These tutorials examples are in the form of Jupyter notebooks, downloadable from a link at the top of each page. (Also available in the same place is a plain-python script version, in case this is more convenient.) You should be able to download these files and run them from anywhere convenient (provided PINT is installed). Finally, there are additional notebooks you can download from the PINT Wiki or the GitHub examples directory: these are not included in the default build because they take too long, but you can download and run them yourself.

• Basic installation
• Time a pulsar
• PINT Example Session
  • Times of Arrival (TOAs)
  • Timing Models
  • Residuals
  • Fitting and Post-Fit residuals
  • Other interesting things
• Demonstrate the use of PINT in a script
• Accessing correlation matrices and model derivatives
  • Extracting the parameter covariance matrix
  • Error ellipses
  • Model derivatives
• Check the state of PINT’s clock corrections
• Understand Observatory Clock Corrections
• Understanding Timing Models
  • Build a timing model starting from a par file
• Understanding Parameters
  • Attributes of Parameters
  • Constructing a parameter
  • Setting Parameters
    • MJD parameters
    • AngleParameters
• Building a timing model from scratch
  • First let us see all the possible components we can use
  • Choose your components
  • Construct timing model (i.e., TimingModel instance)
  • View the components in the timing model instance
  • Useful methods of TimingModel
  • Component order
  • Add parameter values
  • Set up and Validating the model
  • Add a component to the timing model
  • Delete a component
  • Add prefix-style parameters
  • Display the existing DMX parameters
  • Add DMX parameters
  • Check if the parameter and component setup correctly.
  • Remove a parameter
  • Add higher order derivatives of spin frequency to timing model
• How to compose a timing model component
  • Building the timing model component from scratch
  • Import the necessary modules
  • Define the timing model class
    • Required parts
    • Conventions
  • Apply the new component to the TimingModel
    • Load the timing model with new parameterization.
      • Check if the component is loaded into the timing model and make sure there is no built-in spindown model.
    • Load TOAs and prepare for fitting
    • Plot the residuals
    • Plot the prefit residuals.
    • Fit the TOAs using P0 and P1
    • Plot the post-fit residuals
    • Print out the summary
    • Write out a par file for the result
• Understanding Fitters
  • Weighted Least Squares Fitter
  • Comparing models
  • Generalized Least Squares fitter
  • Choosing fitters
• PINT Noise Fitting Examples
  • Fitting for EFAC and EQUAD
  • Fitting for ECORRs
• Red noise, DM noise, and chromatic noise fitting examples
  • Red noise fitting
    • Simulation
    • Optimal number of harmonics
    • Estimating the spectral parameters from the WaveX fit.
  • DM noise fitting
    • Estimating the spectral parameters from the DMWaveX fit.
  • Chromatic noise fitting
    • Estimating the spectral parameters from the CMWaveX fit.
• Working With TOA Flags
• Wideband TOA fitting
  • Set up your inputs
  • Do the fit
  • What is new, compared to narrowband fitting?
    • Residual objects combine TOA and time data
      • If we look into the resids attribute, it has two independent Residual objects.
      • Each of them can be used independently
      • However, in the combined residuals, one can access rms and chi2 as well
      • The initial residuals is also a combined residual object
    • Matrices
      • Design Matrix are combined
      • Covariance Matrix are combined
• Generate fake data on a relativistic DNS, make a mass-mass diagram
• Check for phase connection
• PINT Observatories
• Solar Wind Models
  • Demonstrate the change in covariance going from NE_SW to DMMAX
  • SW model limits & scalings
  • Utility functions
    • Find the next conjunction (time of SW max)
    • Divide the input times (TOAs) into years centered on each conjunction
    • Get max/min DM from standard model, or NE_SW from SWX model
• MCMC Walkthrough
  • Basic Example
    • Sampler and Fitter creation
  • Customizable Example
• PINT Bayesian Interface Examples
  • MCMC sampling using emcee
  • Nested sampling with nestle
• PINT Bayesian Interface Example (Wideband)
• Demonstrate TOA simulation using PINT
  • Basic example
  • Multiple frequency example
  • Correlated noise simulation example
  • Wideband TOA simulation example
  • Simulating TOAs based on a tim file
• Validation Example for PINT paper
  • Print the PINT and TEMPO/TEMPO2 version
  • Redefine the Tempo2_util function for larger number of observations
  • Set up date file path for PSR J1600-3053.
    • PINT run
  • Load TOAs to PINT
  • Load timing model from .par file
  • Make the General Least Square fitter
  • Fit TOAs for 9 iterations.
  • The weighted RMS value for pre-fit and post-fit residuals
  • Plot the pre-fit and post-fit residuals
    • TEMPO run
  • Use tempo_utils to analysis the same data set.
  • Write the TEMPO postfit model to a new .par file, for comparison later
  • Get the TEMPO residuals
  • Plot the PINT - TEMPO residual difference.
  • Compare the parameter between TEMPO and PINT
  • Print the parameter difference in a table.
  • If one wants the Latex output please use the cell below.
  • Check out the maximum DMX difference
  • Output the table in the paper
    • TEMPO2 run
  • PINT refit using the modified tempo2-style parfile
  • Tempo2 fit
  • Get TEMPO2 residuals, toa value, observing frequencies, and data error
  • Plot the TEMPO2 - PINT residual difference
  • Write out the TEMPO2 postfit parameter to a new file
  • Compare the parameter between TEMPO2 and PINT
  • Print the parameter difference in a table.
  • If one wants to get the latex version, please use the line below.
  • Check out the maximum DMX difference
  • Output the table in the paper
  • The residual difference between PINT and TEMPO2 is at the level of ~1ns