The AstroStat Slog

A postdoc job announcement from Prof. Joshua Bloom of UC Berkeley:
http://members.aas.org/JobReg/JobDetailPage.cfm?JobID=26225
Continue reading ‘[Jobs] postdoc position at UC Berkeley’ »

I was told to stay away from python and I’ve obeyed the order sincerely. However, I collected the following stuffs several months back at the instance of hearing about import inference and I hate to see them getting obsolete. At that time, collecting these modules and getting through them could help me complete the first step toward the quest Learning Python (the first posting of this slog). Continue reading ‘some python modules’ »

The 2009 Physics Nobel is shared (along with Charles Kao, who is cited for suggesting optic fibers) by Willard Boyle and George Smith, inventors of the Charge-coupled Device.

The CCD, of course, is the workhorse of modern Astronomy. I cannot even imagine how things would be without it.
Continue reading ‘Boyle & Smith (1969)’ »

This is a special session at the January 2010 meeting of the AAS. It is scheduled for the afternoon of Thursday, Jan 7, 2-3:30pm.

Abstracts are due Sep 17.

Meeting Justification

We propose to highlight the growing use of ‘non-parametric’ techniques to distill meaningful science from today’s astronomical data. Challenges range from Kuiper objects to cosmology. We have chosen just a few ‘teaching’ examples from this lively interdisciplinary area.

Continue reading ‘Beyond simple models-New methods for complex data’ »

The Section on Bayesian Statistical Science (SBSS) of the American Statistical Association (ASA) would like to announce its 2010 student paper competition.  Winners of the competition will receive partial support for attending the 2010 Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) in Vancouver, BC.

Eligibility

The candidate must be a member of SBSS (URL: www.amstat.org/membership/chapsection.pdf) or ISBA (International Society for Bayesian Analysis). Those candidates who have previously received travel support from SBSS are not eligible to participate. In addition, the candidate must be a full-time student (undergraduate, Masters, or Ph.D.) on or after September 1, 2009.

A manuscript, suitable for journal submission, is required for entry. The candidate must be the lead author on the paper, and hold the primary responsibility for the research and write-up.

The candidate must have separately submitted an abstract for JSM 2010 through the regular abstract submission process,  to present applied, computational, or theoretical Bayesian work. Papers should be submitted for presentation at the JSM as topic contributed or invited papers. Those papers not already a part of a session should be submitted online using the following settings:

(at URL: www.amstat.org/meetings/jsm/2010/index.cfm?fuseaction=abstracts):

* Abstract Type: Topic contributed
* Sub Type: Papers
* Sponsor: Section on Bayesian Statistical Science
* Organizer:  Alyson Wilson
* Organizer e-mail: agw -at- iastate.edu

Application Process

The deadline for application is Feb. 1 (same as the JSM 2010 abstract submission deadline). A formal application including the following materials should be emailed to Prof. Vanja Dukic (vanja -at- uchicago.edu):

a)      CV
b)      Abstract number (from the ASA JSM 2010 abstract submission)
c)      Letter from the major professor (advisor) or faculty co-author, verifying the student status of the candidate, and briefly describing the candidate’s role in the research and writing of the paper
d)      The manuscript, suitable for journal submission, in .pdf format.

Selection of Winners

Papers will be reviewed by a committee determined by the officers of the SBSS. Criteria for selection will include, but are not limited to, significance and potential impact of the research.  Decisions of the committee are final, and will be announced in the Spring before the JSM.

Prizes

Prizes will consist of a certificate to be presented at the SBSS section meeting and partial support (up to $1000) for attending the JSM.  Please note that the awards may be unable to cover the entirety of any winner’s travel, so winning candidates may need to supplement the SBSS award with other funds. To receive a monetary prize, the winner will need to provide proof of membership and submit travel receipts to the SBSS treasurer after the JSM.

I wish I could chase all rabbits. Another rabbit I missed came to a realization by a friend, who was sure that I already knew this “call for papers” notice for the special issue of the signal processing magazine (SPM). Although those due dates were mistaken (the white paper due was several months back), my friend thought it would be useful for me and my group just in case I didn’t know about it. Yes, I was very delighted such things were on going. No doubt that I was disappointed when the white paper due was long gone. Continue reading ‘Another exciting news (with no use)’ »

I’m getting behind these days because of chasing too many rabbits. One of those rabbits is hunting online lectures useful for everyone. Prof. Feynman’s lectures have great reputations but they have been hard to come by. I once listened to a pirate version of his lecture tape with horrible sound quality. Thanks to Bill Gates and Microsoft Research, although it is a belated news, I’m very delighted to say “Feynman lectures are online.” Continue reading ‘News and related stories’ »

This simple law, despite my trial of full text search, was not showing in ADS. As discussed in systematic errors, astronomers, like physicists, show their error components in two additive terms; statistical error + systematic error. To explain such decomposition and to make error analysis statistically rigorous, the law of total variance (LTV) seems indispensable. Continue reading ‘[MADS] Law of Total Variance’ »

http://www.tricki.org/

The wikipedia-like repository for mathematical “tricks” has now gone live. Their mission statement:

The main body of the Tricki will be a (large, if all goes according to plan) collection of articles about methods for solving mathematical problems. These will be everything from very general problem-solving tips such as, “If you can’t solve the problem, then try to invent an easier problem that sheds light on it,” to much more specific advice such as, “If you want to solve a linear differential equation, you can convert it into a polynomial equation by taking the Fourier transform.”

I cannot remember when I first met Chernoff face but it hooked me up instantly. I always hoped for confronting multivariate data from astronomy applicable to this charming EDA method. Then, somewhat such eager faded, without realizing what’s happening. Tragically, this was mainly due to my absent mind. Continue reading ‘[MADS] Chernoff face’ »

Woncheol Jang pointed me to the following web site describing a proposal opportunity at DOE that may be of interest to readers of this list:

Mathematics for Analysis of Petascale Data
http://www.science.doe.gov/grants/FAPN09-10.html

The Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) of the Office of Science (SC), U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), hereby announces its interest in receiving grant applications for research addressing the mathematical challenges involved in extracting insights from extremely large datasets (“petascale data”) and investigating fundamental issues in finding key features and understanding the relationships between those features.
…
All applications should address the potential for advances in mathematical methods or numerical algorithms and not just the application of methods and algorithms to a specific science problem, no matter how challenging.
…
This solicitation seeks applications for basic research in mathematical models, methods and tools for the representation, analysis, and understanding of petascale data.

They specifically mention data from physics simulations and observational data from cosmology as examples in the description.

Letters of Intent (required) are due 15 April, proposals are due 29 May. $4M is available for FY09; awards may be for up to 3 yr.

From Christian Fendt comes this announcement:

——————————————————————
First Announcement and Call for Applications
——————————————————————

The “International Max Planck Research School for Astronomy & Cosmic Physics at the University of Heidelberg” (IMPRS-HD)

announces the

— 4th Heidelberg Summer School:

— Statistical Inferences from Astrophysical Data

— August 10-14, 2009

Continue reading ‘[Announce] Heidelberg Summer School’ »

From Jogesh Babu comes this announcement:

Summer School in Statistics for Astronomers V
June 1-6, 2009
Penn State University
http://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su09/

Continue reading ‘[Announce] AstroStat Summer School at Penn State’ »

The iPhone App Store has a couple of apps that make life significantly easier for those of us inundated and overwhelmed by the stream of daily arXiv preprints. These are ArXivReader.app and ArXiv.app, both providing a means to browse and search the arXiv preprint database and both selling for 99c with the first selling for 99c and the second free. Check them out! The former even lets you save papers for off-line reading.

For me at least, the hardest part of going through the arXiv emails every day was to pick out the interesting papers in the deluge of text. These apps do the right thing and segregate the categories and highlight the titles. Fitts’ Law in action — suddenly the daily ritual is orders of magnitude more pleasant!

Ah ha~ Once I questioned, “what is systematic error?” (see [Q] systematic error.) Thanks to L. Lyons’ work discussed in [ArXiv] Particle Physics, I found this paper, titled Systematic Errors describing the concept and statistical inference related to systematic errors in the field of particle physics. It, gladly, shares lots of similarity with high energy astrophysics. Continue reading ‘systematic errors’ »