The AstroStat Slog

I began to study statistics with the notion that statistics is the study of information (retrieval) and a part of information is uncertainty which is taken for granted in our random world. Probably, it is the other way around; information is a part of uncertainty. Could this be the difference between Bayesian and frequentist?

The statistician’s task is to articulate the scientist’s uncertainties in the language of probability, and then to compute with the numbers found: cited from Continue reading ‘Statistics is the study of uncertainty’ »

The numbers of astro-ph preprints on average have been decreased so as my hours of reading abstracts…. cool!!! By the way, there is a paper about solar cycle, PCA, ICA, and Lomb-Scargle periodogram. Continue reading ‘[ArXiv]4th week, Mar. 2008’ »

From Prajval Shastri of IIAp comes news of the sequel to last year’s Astrostatistics school at Kavalur, India:

The Indian Institute of Astrophysics and the Center for Astrostatistics, Pennsylvania State University (USA) are jointly organising an 8-day school in fundamental statistical inference as applicable to astrophysical problems during 9-16 July, 2008 (www.iiap.res.in/astrostat). The school is intended for practising astrophysics researchers at all levels. Details may be found on the website of the school.

Continue reading ‘AstroStatistics School in India’ »

Bradley Efron, Stanford University
11:00 AM, Friday, April 4, 2008
Sever Hall Rm. 103
Title: SIMULTANEOUS INFERENCE: WHEN SHOULD HYPOTHESIS TESTING PROBLEMS BE COMBINED
Its abstract and other informations at http://www.stat.harvard.edu/Colloquia_Content/Efron08.pdf
Continue reading ‘Prof. Brad Efron visits Harvard’ »

Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) never misses a week from recently astro-ph. A book titled MCMC in astronomy will be a best seller. There are, in addition, very interesting non MCMC preprints. Continue reading ‘[ArXiv] 3rd week, Mar. 2007’ »

Warning! The list is long this week but diverse. Some are of CHASC’s obvious interest. Continue reading ‘[ArXiv] 2nd week, Mar. 2008’ »

During the runup to his recent talk on logN-logS, Andreas mentioned how sometimes people are confused about the variety of statistical biases that afflict surveys. They usually know what the biases are, but often tend to mislabel them, especially the Eddington and Malmquist types. Sort of like using “your” and “you’re” interchangeably, which to me is like nails on a blackboard. So here’s a brief summary: Continue reading ‘Eddington versus Malmquist’ »

Astrometry.net, a cool website I heard from Harvard Astronomy Professor Doug Finkbeiner’s class (Principles of Astronomical Measurements), does a complex job of matching your images of unknown locations or coordinates to sources in catalogs. By providing your images in various formats, they provide astrometric calibration meta-data and lists of known objects falling inside the field of view. Continue reading ‘Astrometry.net’ »

“Same data, different authors, different results.”

(Marco Sirianni, from a conference on starbursts).

Irrelevant to astrostatistics but interesting for baseball lovers.
    [stat.AP:0802.4317] Jensen, Shirley, & Wyner
    Bayesball: A Bayesian Hierarchical Model for Evaluating Fielding in Major League Baseball

With the 5th year WMAP data release, there were many WMAP related papers and among them, most statistical papers are listed. Continue reading ‘[ArXiv] 1st week, Mar. 2008’ »

This is a quite long paper that I separated from [Arvix] 4th week, Feb. 2008:
      [astro-ph:0802.3916] P. Carvalho, G. Rocha, & M.P.Hobso
      A fast Bayesian approach to discrete object detection in astronomical datasets – PowellSnakes I
As the title suggests, it describes Bayesian source detection and provides me a chance to learn the foundation of source detection in astronomy. Continue reading ‘[ArXiv] A fast Bayesian object detection’ »

There have been strong collaborations among statisticians, mathematicians, computer scientists, and astronomers (cosmologists) under WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) mission. Today, the 5th year data was released (The news is found here). For more, click Continue reading ‘The WMAP Five-Year Data Release’ »

In this posting, I added lecture notes on cosmic microwave background (CMB) and Gravitas DVD (animation, I believe). There is another paper I must include but I decide to write a short review separately. Continue reading ‘[ArXiv] 4th week, Feb. 2008’ »