The AstroStat Slog

The webcast URL for CAS2010 is at http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/dvlwrap/live/live.ram

The workshop will run from 9:30am-5:30pm EDT on Aug 24 and 25.

The schedule for the mini-Workshop on Computational AstroStatistics is set: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/CAS2010/#schedule

There is an ambitious project afoot to build a 3D map of a meteor stream during the Perseids on Aug 11-12. I got this missive about it from the organizer, Chris Crawford:

This will be one of the better years for Perseids; the moon, which often interferes with the Perseids, will not be a problem this year. So I’m putting together something that’s never been done before: a spatial analysis of the Perseid meteor stream. We’ve had plenty of temporal analyses, but nobody has ever been able to get data over a wide area — because observations have always been localized to single observers. But what if we had hundreds or thousands of people all over North America and Europe observing Perseids and somebody collected and collated all their observations? This is crowd-sourcing applied to meteor astronomy. I’ve been working for some time on putting together just such a scheme. I’ve got a cute little Java applet that you can use on your laptop to record the times of fall of meteors you see, the spherical trig for analyzing the geometry (oh my aching head!) and a statistical scheme that I *think* will reveal the spatial patterns we’re most likely to see — IF such patterns exist. I’ve also got some web pages describing the whole shebang. They start here:

http://www.erasmatazz.com/page78/page128/PerseidProject/PerseidProject.html

I think I’ve gotten all the technical, scientific, and mathematical problems solved, but there remains the big one: publicizing it. It won’t work unless I get hundreds of observers. That’s where you come in. I’m asking two things of you:

1. Any advice, criticism, or commentary on the project as presented in the web pages.
2. Publicizing it. If we can get that ol’ Web Magic going, we could get thousands of observers and end up with something truly remarkable. So, would you be willing to blog about this project on your blog?
3. I would be especially interested in your comments on the statistical technique I propose to use in analyzing the data. It is sketched out on the website here:

http://www.erasmatazz.com/page78/page128/PerseidProject/Statistics/Statistics.html

Given my primitive understanding of statistical analysis, I expect that your comments will be devastating, but if you’re willing to take the time to write them up, I’m certainly willing to grit my teeth and try hard to understand and implement them.

Thanks for any help you can find time to offer.

Chris Crawford

mini-Workshop on Computational Astro-statistics: Challenges and Methods for Massive Astronomical Data
Aug 24-25, 2010
Phillips Auditorium, CfA,
60 Garden St., Cambridge, MA 02138

URL: http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/CAS2010
Continue reading ‘mini-Workshop on Computational AstroStatistics [announcement]’ »

The Vatican adopts the FITS standard. Yes, really.

(via /.)

From Jogesh Babu:

First Announcement

Summer School in Statistics for Astronomers VI
June 7-12, 2010
with a supplement on Statistics and Computation for Astronomical Surveys
June 12-14, 2010
Registration Deadline: May 3, 2010 or when the enrollment limit reaches.
Penn State University

http://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su10/

Continue reading ‘AstroStat Summer School [Announcement]’ »

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.”