Related papers: Introduction to papers on astrostatistics
Astronomy is an observationally-led subject where chance discoveries play an important role. A whole range of such discoveries is continually made, from the trivial to the highly significant. What is generally needed is for luck to strike…
Sky surveys represent a fundamental data basis for astronomy. We use them to map in a systematic way the universe and its constituents, and to discover new types of objects or phenomena. We review the subject, with an emphasis on the…
We describe the application of data mining algorithms to research problems in astronomy. We posit that data mining has always been fundamental to astronomical research, since data mining is the basis of evidence-based discovery, including…
The history of astrometry, the branch of astronomy dealing with the positions of celestial objects, is a lengthy and complex chronicle, having its origins in the earliest records of astronomical observations more than two thousand years…
Most scientific data will never be directly examined by scientists; rather it will be put into online databases where it will be analyzed and summarized by computer programs. Scientists increasingly see their instruments through online…
This is a summary of the `Astronomy Perspective' of the 4th meeting on 'Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy' held at Penn State University in June 2006. We comment on trends in the Astronomy community towards Bayesian methods and…
The massive data sets from today's particle physics experiments present a variety of challenges amenable to the tools developed by the statistics community. From the real-time decision of what subset of data to record on permanent storage,…
Telescopes are much more expensive than astronomers, so it is essential to minimize required sample sizes by using the most data-efficient statistical methods possible. However, the most commonly used model-independent techniques for…
Cosmology contributes a good deal to the investigation of variation of fundamental physical constants. High resolution data is available and allows for detailed analysis over cosmological distances and a multitude of methods were developed.…
With the availability of nice images and amazing, dramatic stories, the fundamental questions it addresses, and the attraction is exerces on many, it is often assumed that astronomy is an obvious topic for the media. Looking more carefully,…
Statistics is a uniquely difficult field to convey to the uninitiated. It sits astride the abstract and the concrete, the theoretical and the applied. It has a mathematical flavor and yet it is not simply a branch of mathematics. Its core…
Over the last half-century quantitative stellar spectroscopy has made great progress. However, most stellar abundance analyses today still employ rather simplified models, which can introduce severe systematic errors swamping the…
We review the current state of data mining and machine learning in astronomy. 'Data Mining' can have a somewhat mixed connotation from the point of view of a researcher in this field. If used correctly, it can be a powerful approach,…
The field of astronomy is experiencing a data explosion driven by significant advances in observational instrumentation, and classical methods often fall short of addressing the complexity of modern astronomical datasets. Probabilistic…
Astrophysics has become a domain extremely rich of scientific data. Data mining tools are needed for information extraction from such large datasets. This asks for an approach to data management emphasizing the efficiency and simplicity of…
In the distant past, astronomy was often intertwined with religion into a unified cosmos. As science became a distinct cultural enterprise, astronomy has witnessed a variety of rich interactions with other fields. Mathematical statistics…
Astronomy is entering a new era as multiple, large area, digital sky surveys are in production. The resulting datasets are truly remarkable in their own right; however, a revolutionary step arises in the aggregation of complimentary…
Statistical physics has proven to be a very fruitful framework to describe phenomena outside the realm of traditional physics. The last years have witnessed the attempt by physicists to study collective phenomena emerging from the…
Modern astronomy increasingly relies upon systematic surveys, whose dedicated telescopes continuously observe the sky across varied wavelength ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum; some surveys also observe non-electromagnetic…
This special volume of Statistical Sciences presents some innovative, if not provocative, ideas in the area of reliability, or perhaps more appropriately named, integrated system assessment. In this age of exponential growth in science,…