Our meddling intellect
Misshapes the beauteous forms of things: --
We murder to dissect.
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
-
William Wadsworth,
from The Tables Turned, 1798
Once the raw data from the phototubes (both pulse-hieghts and timing) have been collected and written to tape, that data must be used to calculate physically useful quantities (i.e. energy) and those must be used to generate the physical observables that are being sought in the first place. This chapter will discuss the calculational methods and techniques used to reduce the data to the final observables. Unless otherwise indicated the procedures described are used on the data from the INPOL polarimeter.