The AstroStat Slog

Hyunsook recently said that she wished that there were “some astronomical data depositories where no data reduction is required but one can apply various statistical analyses to the data in the depository to learn and compare statistical methods”. With the caveat that there really is no such thing (every dataset will require case specific reduction; standard processing and reduction are inadequate in all but the simplest of cases), here is a brief list: Continue reading ‘Reduced and Processed Data’ »

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’ »

Since Summer 2005, G. Jogesh Babu (Statistics) and Eric Feigelson (Astronomy) have organized lectures and lab sessions on statistics for astronomers and physicists. Lecturers are professors from Penn State statistics department and invited renown scientists from different countries. Students show diverse demography as well. Within a week or so, students listen Statistics 101 to recently published statistical theories particularly applied to astronomical data. They also learn how to use R, a statistical software and script language to perform statistics they learn through lectures. Past two years, this summer school proved its uniqueness and usefulness. More information on the upcoming school can be found at http://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su07/index.html and other topics regarding astrostatistics at Center for AstroStatistics at Penn State.