Related papers: Smooth maps from clumpy data: Covariance analysis
In a series of papers (Lombardi & Schneider 2001, 2002) we studied in detail the statistical properties of an interpolation technique widely used in astronomy. In particular, we considered the average interpolated map and its covariance…
Smoothing is omnipresent in astronomy, because almost always measurements performed at discrete positions in the sky need to be interpolated into a smooth map for subsequent analysis. Still, the statistical properties of different…
Cosmological observables rely heavily on summary statistics such as two-point correlation functions. In many practical cases (e.g. the weak-lensing cosmic shear), those correlation functions are estimated from a finite, discrete sample of…
We study an estimator for smoothing irregularly sampled data into a smooth map. The estimator has been widely used in astronomy, owing to its low level of noise; it involves a weight function -- or smoothing kernel -- w(\theta). We show…
In Astronomy, Survival Analysis and Epidemiology, among many other fields, doubly truncated data often appear. Double truncation generally induces a sampling bias, so ordinary estimators may be inconsistent. In this paper, smoothing spline…
The error between appropriately smooth functions and their radial basis function interpolants, as the interpolation points fill out a bounded domain in R^d, is a well studied artifact. In all of these cases, the analysis takes place in a…
We derive in this paper expressions for the covariance matrix of the cosmic shear two-point correlation functions which are readily applied to any survey geometry. Furthermore, we consider the more special case of a simple survey geometry…
A comprehensive methodology is provided for smoothing noisy, irregularly sampled data with non-Gaussian noise using smoothing splines. We demonstrate how the spline order and tension parameter can be chosen a priori from physical reasoning.…
We introduce a new method for estimating the covariance matrix for the galaxy correlation function in surveys of large-scale structure. Our method combines simple theoretical results with a realistic characterization of the survey to…
Analytical expressions for covariances of weak lensing statistics related to the aperture mass $\Map$ are derived for realistic survey geometries such as SNAP for a range of smoothing angles and redshift bins. We incorporate the…
This article introduces a method for estimating the smoothness of a stationary, isotropic Gaussian random field from irregularly spaced data. This involves novel constructions of higher-order quadratic variations and the establishment of…
Smoothing of noisy sample covariances is an important component in functional data analysis. We propose a novel covariance smoothing method based on penalized splines and associated software. The proposed method is a bivariate spline…
Optimal analyses using the 2-point functions of large-scale structure probes require accurate covariance matrices. A covariance matrix of the 2-point function comprises the disconnected part and the connected part. While the connected…
We discuss a number of estimates of the hazard under the assumption that the hazard is monotone on an interval [0,a]. The usual isotonic least squares estimators of the hazard are inconsistent at the boundary points 0 and a. We use…
We discuss point sources foregrounds for the MAP experiment. We consider several possible strategies for removing them and we assess how the statistics of the CMB signal are affected by the residual sources. Assuming a power law…
Smooth entropies are a tool for quantifying resource trade-offs in (quantum) information theory and cryptography. In typical bi- and multi-partite problems, however, some of the sub-systems are often left unchanged and this is not reflected…
The fully general calculation of the cosmic error on N-point correlation functions and related quantities is presented. More precisely, the variance caused by the finite volume, discreteness, and edge effects is determined for {\em any}…
The total generalized variation extends the total variation by incorporating higher-order smoothness. Thus, it can also suffer from similar discretization issues related to isotropy. Inspired by the success of novel discretization schemes…
Functions of interest are often smooth and sparse in some sense, and both priors should be taken into account when interpolating sampled data. Classical linear interpolation methods are effective under strong regularity assumptions, but…
In this paper, we study a smoothness regularization method for a varying coefficient model based on sparse and irregularly sampled functional data which is contaminated with some measurement errors. We estimate the one-dimensional…