Related papers: LBVs and Statistical Inference
It is still a matter of debate if the group of lambda Bootis stars is homogeneously defined. A widely discussed working hypothesis formulates that two apparent solar abundant stars of an undetected spectroscopic binary system mimic a single…
We discuss moderate resolution spectra, multicolor photometry, and light curves of thirty-one of the most luminous stars and variables in the giant spiral M101. The majority are intermediate A to F-type supergiants. We present new…
The Lema\'itre-Toman-Bondi (LTB) models have reported to suffer from incompatibility with cosmological observations and fine-tuning of the observer's location. Further analysis of these issues indicates that they could be resolved by models…
Saulder et al [2019, A&A, 622, A83; arXiv:1811.11976] have performed a novel observational test of the local expansion of the Universe for the standard cosmology as compared to an alternative model with differential cosmic expansion. Their…
The lack of experimental evidence at the LHC for physics beyond the Standard model (BSM) of elementary particles together with necessity of its existence to provide solutions of internal problems of the Standard model (SM) as well as of…
Large differences between the properties of the known sample of cataclysmic variable stars (CVs) and the predictions of the theory of binary star evolution have long been recognised. However, because all existing CV samples suffer from…
Bayesian methods have proved powerful in many applications for the inference of model parameters from data. These methods are based on Bayes' theorem, which itself is deceptively simple. However, in practice the computations required are…
A central challenge in statistical inference is the presence of confounding variables that may distort observed associations between treatment and outcome. Conventional "causal" methods, grounded in assumptions such as ignorability, exclude…
For measuring the strength of visually-observed subpopulation differences, the Population Difference Criterion is proposed to assess the statistical significance of visually observed subpopulation differences. It addresses the following…
Only astronomical observations can effectively probe in space-time the variabil ity of the physical dimensionless constants such as the fine structure constant and proton-to-electron mass ratio, \mu, which are related to fund amental forces…
Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs) are enigmatic, evolved, massive stars. Their variability has been observed to be episodic with large eruptions, along with variations on time-scales of days to decades. We have extracted light curves of 37…
In this series of papers we have presented the results of a spectroscopic survey of luminous and variable stars in the nearby spirals M31 and M33. In this paper, we present spectroscopy of 132 additional luminous stars, variables, and…
Cross-validation (CV) is known to provide asymptotically exact tests and confidence intervals for model improvement but only when the model comparison is relatively stable. Surprisingly, we prove that even simple, individually stable models…
Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs) are believed to be evolved, extremely massive stars close to the Eddington Limit and hence prone to bouts of large-scale, unstable mass loss. I discuss current understanding of the evolutionary state of these…
I present an analytic method for estimating the errors in fitting a distribution. A well-known theorem from statistics gives the minimum variance bound (MVB) for the uncertainty in estimating a set of parameters $\l_i$, when a distribution…
Variational Bayes (VB) is rapidly becoming a popular tool for Bayesian inference in statistical modeling. However, the existing VB algorithms are restricted to cases where the likelihood is tractable, which precludes the use of VB in many…
In many applications, the underlying scientific question concerns whether the variances of $k$ samples are equal. There are a substantial number of tests for this problem. Many of them rely on the assumption of normality and are not robust…
Only about 19 Galactic and 25 extra-galactic bona-fide Luminous Blue Variables (LBVs) are known to date. This incomplete census prevents our understanding of this crucial phase of massive star evolution which leads to the formation of heavy…
We show that the $k$th order statistic from a heterogeneous sample of $n\geq k$ exponential random variables is larger than that from a homogeneous exponential sample in the sense of star ordering, as conjectured by Xu and Balakrishnan…
Strong gravitational lensing offers constraints on the Hubble constant that are independent of other methods. However, those constraints are subject to uncertainties in lens models. Previous studies suggest that using an elliptical power…