Why Gaussianity?
Physicists believe that the Gaussian law has been proved in mathematics while mathematicians think that it was experimentally established in physics — Henri Poincare
Posts tagged ‘CLT’
On the history and use of some standard statistical models
What if R. A. Fisher was hired by the Royal Observatory in spite that his interest was biology and agriculture, or W. S. Gosset[1] instead of brewery? An article by E.L. Lehmann made me think this what if. If so, astronomers could have handled errors better than now. Continue reading ‘On the history and use of some standard statistical models’ »
- Gosset’s pen name was Student, from which the name, Student-t in t-distribution or t-test was spawned.[↩]
Books - a boring title
I have been observing some sorts of misconception about statistics and statistical nomenclature evolution in astronomy, which I believe, are attributed to the lack of references in the astronomical society. There are some textbooks designed for junior/senior science and engineering students, which are likely unknown to astronomers. Example-wise, these books are not suitable, to my knowledge. Although I never expect astronomers to learn standard graduate (mathematical) statistics textbooks, I do wish astronomers go beyond Numerical Recipes (W. H. Press, S. A. Teukolsky, W. T. Vetterling, & B. P. Flannery) and Error Data Reduction and Analysis for the Physical Sciences (P. R. Bevington & D. K. Robinson). Here are some good ones written by astronomers, engineers, and statisticians: Continue reading ‘Books - a boring title’ »
[ArXiv] 3rd week, Jan. 2008
Seven preprints were chosen this week and two mentioned model selection. Continue reading ‘[ArXiv] 3rd week, Jan. 2008’ »
The last [ArXiv] of 2007
This will be the last [ArXiv] of this year (for some of you, the previous year). Continue reading ‘The last [ArXiv] of 2007’ »