Posts tagged ‘outliers’

[MADS] Mahalanobis distance

It bears the name of its inventor, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis. As opposed to the Euclidean distance, a household name, the name of this distance is rarely used but many pseudonyms exist with variations adapted into broad scientific disciplines and applications. Therefore, under different names, I believe that the Mahalanobis distance is frequently applied in exploring and analyzing astronomical data. Continue reading ‘[MADS] Mahalanobis distance’ »

Classification and Clustering

Another deduced conclusion from reading preprints listed in arxiv/astro-ph is that astronomers tend to confuse classification and clustering and to mix up methodologies. They tend to think any algorithms from classification or clustering analysis serve their purpose since both analysis algorithms, no matter what, look like a black box. I mean a black box as in neural network, which is one of classification algorithms. Continue reading ‘Classification and Clustering’ »