Abstract: Within the fields of proteomics and genetics, a majority of experiments involve the search for differential expression. In these experiments there are numerous data processing steps involved in the analysis before deeming a quantity as ``differentially expressed.'' Most of the processing steps focus on removing variation through alignment measures, summary measures, or smoothing techniques. By focusing specifically on the systematic variation in microarray experiments and electrophoresis experiments, this talk will explore some of the initial steps required in any analysis where differential expression is the end goal.