Spectroscopic data consists of a set of numbers which may be plotted on a graph. These numbers indicate a range of values rather than a single discrete value. It is straightforward to assign a meaning to a single value, but interpreting the meaning of a range of values requires more judgment. In nuclear physics, spectroscopic data is related to the mass or energy of a particle detected from a nuclear reaction. these data are discrete numbers, but because of the interactions between the nuclear reaction and the particle detector, a range of data is collected. Although it takes many years of experience to learn how to interpret nuclear physics spectra, the data reduction and analysis are fairly routine. The routine parts of data reduction and analysis can be automated by expert system techniques.