Fit starting values

In the bank MXFF, after the details for simulated annealing, there are a series of six entries for each distribution to be fitted for as shown below for the first 4 distributions:

#. Distribution overall weighting coefficient specifications:
#. 1 = Starting value, USED FOR ALL FITS
#. 2 = simplex width, JUST FOR SIMULATED ANNEALING
#. 3,4 = constraint1 (low or mean), constraint2 (upper or sigma)
#. 5 =constraint flag, =0(no constraint) =1(gausian constraint)
#. =2(between lower and upper with equal probability) ALL FITS
#. 6 = value flag =0(by value) =1(as fraction of total # events)
#. These values are all set as the fraction of the total 
#. number of events if the flag is set to 1

0.5   0.9    0.0   0.0   0    1  #. 1
0.5   0.9    0.0   0.0   0    1  #. 2
0.5   0.9    0.0   0.0   0    1  #. 3
20.   40.    20.4  12.6   1   0  #. 4

The starting value for the fit is the value in the first column. The last column holds a value flag. If this is set to 1 then the values specified for that distribution are taken as a fraction of the total number of events, but if is is set to zero the value itself is taken. For example if I have 3000 data events, the starting value for the first 3 distributions I am fitting for is going to be 1500 (0.5*3000) whereas for the fourth distribution I wish to start with a value of 20. events. The second column contains a value for the simplex width which is generated for the simulated annealing fitting. The next three columns are involved with constraining parameters in the fit as described in the next section.