Related papers: The Lutz-Kelker Paradox
In the age of Kepler and Corot, extended observations have provided estimates of stellar pulsation frequencies that have achieved new levels of precision, regularly exceeding fractional levels of a few parts in $10^{4}$. These high levels…
In a companion paper we presented a statistical model for the blazar population, consisting of distributions for the unbeamed radio luminosity function and the Lorentz factor distribution of each of the BL Lac and Flat Spectrum Radio Quasar…
The integrated spectro-photometric properties of star clusters are subject to large cluster-to-cluster variations. They are distributed in non trivial ways around the average properties predicted by standard population synthesis models.…
Pulsating stars, such as Cepheids, Miras, and RR Lyrae stars, are important distance indicators and calibrators of the "cosmic distance ladder", and yet their period-luminosity-metallicity (PLZ) relations are still constrained using simple…
Automatic classification methods applied to sky surveys have revolutionized the astronomical target selection process. Most surveys generate a vast amount of time series, or \quotes{lightcurves}, that represent the brightness variability of…
Weak lensing leads to the non-Gaussian magnification distribution of standard candles at given redshift $z$, $p(\mu|z)$. In this paper, we give accurate and simple empirical fitting formulae of the weak lensing numerical simulation results…
For the universal hypothesis testing problem, where the goal is to decide between the known null hypothesis distribution and some other unknown distribution, Hoeffding proposed a universal test in the nineteen sixties. Hoeffding's universal…
Early attempts to apply asteroseismology to study the Galaxy have already shown unexpected discrepancies for the mass distribution of stars between the Galactic models and the data; a result that is still unexplained. Here, we revisit the…
The likelihood ratio test (LRT) and the related $F$ test, do not (even asymptotically) adhere to their nominal $\chi^2$ and $F$ distributions in many statistical tests common in astrophysics, thereby casting many marginal line or source…
For a number of reasons, the properties of integrated stellar populations are distributed. Traditional synthesis models usually return the mean value of such distribution, and a perfect fitting to observational data is sought for to infer…
The probability distribution of lens image separations is calculated for the ``standard'' gravitational lensing statistics model in an arbitrary, flat Robertson-Walker universe, where lensing galaxies are singular isothermal spheres that…
In many applications in biology, engineering and economics, identifying similarities and differences between distributions of data from complex processes requires comparing finite categorical samples of discrete counts. Statistical…
Aims. We aim at creating a Bayesian model to infer the coefficients of PL or PLZ relations that propagates uncertainties in the observables in a rigorous and well founded way. Methods. We propose a directed acyclic graph to encode the…
Recent studies have shown that the irregular O-C variations observed in many non-Blazhko RR Lyrae stars may result from random, cycle-to-cycle (C2C) variations in their light curves. However, centuries-long data series reveal that the O-C…
A magnitude limited population of 18 808 Hipparcos stars is used to calibrate distances for 52 794 RAVE stars, including dwarfs, giants, and pre-main sequence stars. I give treatments for a number of types of bias affecting calculation,…
This paper discusses the dual interpretation of the Jeffreys--Lindley's paradox associated with Bayesian posterior probabilities and Bayes factors, both as a differentiation between frequentist and Bayesian statistics and as a pointer to…
Many star bodies have convex subsets with approximately the same Gaussian measure (of the complement). Inspired by this phenomenon, and in connection with the randomized Dvoretzky theorem for Lorentz spaces, we derive bounds on the…
I review statistical parallax absolute magnitude determinations which employ data from the HIPPARCOS satellite for RR Lyrae and Cepheid variables, and for several other stellar classes. Five groups have studied the RR Lyrae stars, and the…
Probabilistic cross-identification has been successfully applied to a number of problems in astronomy from matching simple point sources to associating stars with unknown proper motions and even radio observations with realistic morphology.…
The unprecedented quality of recent colour-magnitude diagrams of resolved stellar populations in nearby galaxies requires state-of-the-art techniques to infer the star formation histories which gave rise to the observed distributions. We…