Related papers: What Is In a Survey? Simulation-Induced Selection …
We summarize the status of a computer simulator for microlens planet surveys. The simulator generates synthetic light curves of microlensing events observed with specified networks of telescopes over specified periods of time. Particular…
The main goal of galaxy surveys is to map the distribution of the galaxies, for the purpose of understanding the properties of this distribution and its implications for the content and the evolution of the universe. However, in order to…
We provide an approach to exploratory data analysis in matched observational studies with a single intervention and multiple endpoints. In such settings, the researcher would like to explore evidence for actual treatment effects among these…
Future surveys will access large volumes of space and hence very long wavelength fluctuations of the matter density and gravitational field. It has been argued that the set of secondary effects that affect the galaxy distribution,…
Modified gravity theories may provide an alternative to dark energy to explain cosmic acceleration. We argue that the observational program developed to test dark energy needs to be augmented to capture new tests of gravity on astrophysical…
Our knowledge of the Galaxy is being revolutionised by a series of photometric, spectroscopic and astrometric surveys. Already an enormous body of data is available from completed surveys, and data of ever increasing quality and richness…
One of the most striking properties of galaxies is the bimodality in their star-formation rates. A major puzzle is why any given galaxy is star-forming or quiescent, and a wide range of physical mechanisms have been proposed as solutions.…
One of the innovative approaches in contemporary philosophical ontology consists in the assumption of a plurality of ontologies based on different metaphysical presuppositions. Such presuppositions involve, among others, the identification…
One important source of systematics in galaxy redshift surveys comes from the estimation of the galaxy window function. Up until now, the impact of the uncertainty in estimating the galaxy window function on parameter inference has not been…
Weak gravitational lensing is responsible for the shearing and magnification of the images of high-redshift sources due to the presence of intervening matter. The distortions are due to fluctuations in the gravitational potential, and are…
Since the early 1970s, stellar population modelling has been one of the basic tools for understanding the physics of unresolved systems from observation of their integrated light. Models allow us to relate the integrated spectra (or…
Survey experiments are widely used to identify causal effects in political science and the social sciences. Yet researchers are typically interested in more than the internal validity of an experimentally induced contrast. They also want to…
The concept of evaluation gaps captures potential discrepancies between what researchers value about their research, in particular research quality, and what metrics measure. The existence of evaluation gaps can give rise to questions about…
Model selection aims to determine which theoretical models are most plausible given some data, without necessarily asking about the preferred values of the model parameters. A common model selection question is to ask when new data require…
Astronomical objects in our universe that are too faint to be directly detectable exist and are important - an obvious example being dark matter. The same can also apply to very faint baryonic objects, such as low luminosity dwarf galaxies…
The beginning of the 21st century marked the "modern era of galaxy surveys" in astronomy. Rapid innovation in observing technology, combined with the base built by galaxy catalogs and atlases dating back centuries, sparked an explosion of…
The abundances of dark matter halos in the universe are described by the halo mass function (HMF). It enters most cosmological analyses and parametrizes how the linear growth of primordial perturbations is connected to these abundances.…
Demographic studies of cosmic populations must contend with measurement errors and selection effects. We survey some of the key ideas astronomers have developed to deal with these complications, in the context of galaxy surveys and the…
The spatial distribution of galaxies we observed is subject to the given condition that we, human beings are sitting right in a galaxy -- the Milky Way. Thus the ergodicity assumption is questionable in interpretation of the observed galaxy…
Cosmic voids, the large underdense regions of our Universe, have emerged over the past decade as powerful cosmological laboratories: their simple dynamics, sensitivity to local gravitational effects and cosmic expansion, and ability to span…