May 21st, 2008| 01:00 pm | Posted by vlk
There is a lesson that statisticians, especially of the Bayesian persuasion, have been hammering into our skulls for ages: do not subtract background. Nevertheless, old habits die hard, and old codes die harder. Such is the case with X-ray aperture photometry. Continue reading ‘Background Subtraction [EotW]’ »
Tags:
aperture photometry,
background,
background marginalization,
background subtraction,
celldetect,
Chandra,
ciao,
EotW,
Equation,
error propagation,
ldetect,
local detect,
wavdetect,
X-ray Category:
Algorithms,
Astro,
Jargon |
6 Comments
May 20th, 2008| 12:10 am | Posted by vlk
Earlier this year, Peter Edmonds showed me a press release that the Chandra folks were, at the time, considering putting out describing the possible identification of a Type Ia Supernova progenitor. What appeared to be an accreting white dwarf binary system could be discerned in 4-year old observations, coincident with the location of a supernova that went off in November 2007 (SN2007on). An amazing discovery, but there is a hitch.
And it is a statistical hitch, and involves two otherwise highly reliable and oft used methods giving contradictory answers at nearly the same significance level! Does this mean that the chances are actually 50-50? Really, we need a bona fide statistician to take a look and point out the errors of our ways.. Continue reading ‘Did they, or didn’t they?’ »
Tags:
arXiv,
Chandra,
CXC,
Optical,
Peter Edmonds,
positional coincidence,
positional error,
Power,
progenitor,
question for statisticians,
significance,
Supernova,
Type Ia,
White Dwarf,
White Dwarf binary,
X-ray Category:
arXiv,
Astro,
Data Processing,
News,
Objects,
Optical,
Stat,
Uncertainty |
5 Comments
Sep 20th, 2007| 12:26 pm | Posted by vlk
[arXiv:0709.3093v1] Short Timescale Coronal Variability in Capella (Kashyap & Posson-Brown)
We recently submitted that paper to AJ, and rather ironically, I did the analysis during the same time frame as this discussion was going on, about how astronomers cannot rely on repeating observations. Ironic because the result reported there hinges on the existence of small, but persistent signal that is found in repeated observations of the same source. Doubly ironic in fact, in that just as we were backing and forthing about cultural differences I seemed to have gone and done something completely contrary to my heritage! Continue reading ‘Betraying your heritage’ »
Tags:
arXiv,
Capella,
Cross-Cultural,
HRC,
overdispersion,
repeatability,
significance,
variability,
X-ray Category:
arXiv,
Astro,
Cross-Cultural,
Quotes,
Stars,
Stat,
Timing,
X-ray |
Comment
Aug 8th, 2007| 05:14 pm | Posted by hlee
X-ray summer school is on going. Numerous interesting topics were presented but not much about statistics (Only advice so far, “use implemented statistics in x-ray data reduction/analysis tools” and “it’s just a tool”). Nevertheless, I happened to talk two students extensively on their research topics, finding features from light curves. One was very empirical from comparing gamma ray burst trigger time to 24kHz observations and the other was statistical and algorithmic by using Bayesian Block. Sadly, I could not give them answers but the latter one dragged my attention.
Continue reading ‘Change Point Problem’ »
Tags:
ARCH,
Bayesian Block,
challenges,
change point problem,
GARCH,
light curves,
summer school,
X-ray Category:
Algorithms,
Bayesian,
Cross-Cultural,
Data Processing,
gamma-ray,
High-Energy,
Stat,
Timing,
X-ray |
4 Comments