Data analysis for electronic experiments

In this lecture I schell attempt to cover the principal off-line software aspects in electronic experiments. Of course, this is too ambitious an undertaking for two reasons: Firstly the field is vast, and some important aspect will certainly have escaped my attention. Secondly, the choice of methods, features, algorithms, and packages presented will be biased through my personal opinion and experience, although to some extent it is influenced as well by the opinion and experience of my colleagues, who, like myself, are working in this field at CERN. Therefore, beware. Whenever I shall claim something to be evident, a matter of experience -- a fact --it ain't necessarily so. On the other hand, it will not be entirely wrong, since our experience is based on something like 30 experiments in high-energy physics using electronic for other people, and although these people are of course misled, one has to admit their existence. (orig.)