Brian, I should have mentioned my set of "unofficial" notebooks I occasionally update - you can find them at https://github.com/DougBurke/sherpa-standalone-notebooks and I think the following may be helpful (or at least I hope it is) https://github.com/DougBurke/sherpa-standalone-notebooks/blob/master/Fitting%20a%20PHA%20dataset%20using%20the%20object%20API.ipynb