Comments for The AstroStat Slog

Comment on From Terence’s stuff: You want proof? by Raoul LePage

Raoul LePage — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 17:44:19 +0000

I’ve long been cautious about any model employing hypotheses of randomness in model components, particularly the backbone method of multiple linear regression, popular accounts of which may have encouraged the use of such hypotheses elsewhere. One particular liability of models is they may suggest particular classes of sample points are all that are needed. Examples include regression models positing iid errors that are much the same no matter which sample points are included in the regression design. Something similar is seen in time series and elsewhere. If the model is wrong on that point it may have encouraged a laxity in data selection from which there is no recovery once the data are in. I call this “brittle” modeling. Statistics is yet young. Stay tuned for models that are more in the spirit of sampling theory where inference is rooted in randomness introduced by the experimenter rather than hypothesized (a different sample space) and no model is correct although some may be estimated to provide better population description than others. Simpler may for some purposes prove better in the long run.

Comment on [MADS] Parallel Coordinates by vlk

vlk — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 09:09:59 +0000

You can use reCAPTCHA, see http://www.google.com/recaptcha and http://code.google.com/apis/recaptcha/docs/wordpress.html

Comment on [MADS] Parallel Coordinates by upvc windows

upvc windows — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 23:43:26 +0000

Hey! I know this is kinda off topic but I was wondering if you knew where I could get a captcha plugin for my comment form? I’m using the same blog platform as yours and I’m having difficulty finding one? Thanks a lot!

Comment on Yes, please by brianISU

brianISU — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:24:31 +0000

I agree with this statement. If I were to have an extremely wide confidence interval, I would not be very confident with it.

Comment on About by chasc

chasc — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 22:53:37 +0000

Sorry for the problems with the RSS feed. At the risk of sounding trite, but truly, we are encountering technical difficulties.

Comment on About by Ali

Ali — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 22:36:49 +0000

Hi – Any chance of fixing the RSS feed; I’d really like to subscribe in google reader. Thanks.

Comment on About by Gus

Gus — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 18:59:39 +0000

hi, the “…/feed/rss/” URL no longer seems to work. the content that this URL returns is broken/incomplete HTML.

google reader seems to have a cache of its posts but that ended at the end of 2009. So sometime around the 1st of the year 2010, WP started producing garbage RSS.

Comment on Everybody needs crampons by vlk

vlk — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 03:11:44 +0000

Thanks for the link to the Sherpa scripts page, Doug. The best way to become familiar with a new language is to see lots of simple examples.

Also thanks for the other comments. I will probably include those comments by moving this page off to gWave shortly — it is much easier to update and make changes there than in the blog format.

Comment on Everybody needs crampons by Doug Burke

Doug Burke — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 22:16:48 +0000

Vinay, Have you looked at the Sherpa scripts page. For instance, some of the plot options are discussed in the plotting thread, although I couldn't see the error bars explicitly addressed. Try


p = get_data_plot_prefs()
print(p)
p["yerrorbars"] = False

To change the units of the y error bars, use the set_analysis() routine, for instance


set_analysis("wave", type="counts")

Also, for error estimation, we suggest you use


conf()

rather than projection nowadays, and note that the error analysis will be done in parallel (so expect all your cores to get used up). And finally,


,ahelp set_analysis

can also be used to avoid quoting the first argument by using a comma before the command. This is an ipython-ism, and can be used for other commands, e.g.


,load_pha foo.pha

Doug

Comment on [Jobs] postdoc position at UC Berkeley by Joseph Hilbe

Joseph Hilbe — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:34:55 +0000

The web site for the new ISI astrostatistics committee and Network, which is aimed to become a global network of astrostatisticians is:
http://isi.cbs.nl/COMM/AstroStat/index.htm
Anyone with an interest in the statistical analysis of astronomical data is welcome to join. The current website is only the initial version and will be updated shortly.

Joseph Hilbe
Chair, ISI astrostatistics
hilbe@asu.edu