  Observations of GRB afterglows ranging from radio to X-ray frequencies
generate large data sets. Careful analysis of these broad-band data can give us
insight into the nature of the GRB progenitor population by yielding such
information like the total energy of the burst, the geometry of the fireball
and the type of environment into which the GRB explodes. We illustrate, by
example, how global, self-consistent fits are a robust approach for
characterizing the afterglow emission. This approach allows a relatively simple
comparison of different models and a way to determine the strengths and
weaknesses of these models, since all are treated self-consistently. Here we
quantify the main differences between the broad-band, self-consistent approach
and the traditional approach, using GRB000301C and GRB970508 as test cases.
