Related papers: Bayesian model selection and isocurvature perturba…
The principles of measuring the shapes of galaxies by a model-fitting approach are discussed in the context of shape-measurement for surveys of weak gravitational lensing. It is argued that such an approach should be optimal, allowing…
We analyse the cosmological evolution of a generalised axion-like field that drives the late-time acceleration of the Universe. This model can exhibit tracking behaviour, which alleviates the coincidence problem. The cosmological…
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…
Bayesian inference is a powerful tool in gravitational-wave astronomy. It enables us to deduce the properties of merging compact-object binaries and to determine how these mergers are distributed as a population according to mass, spin, and…
We develop a Bayesian framework for variable selection in linear regression with autocorrelated errors, accommodating lagged covariates and autoregressive structures. This setting occurs in time series applications where responses depend on…
We review the basic hypotheses which motivate the statistical framework used to analyze the cosmic microwave background, and how that framework can be enlarged as we relax those hypotheses. In particular, we try to separate as much as…
Current analysis of astronomical data are confronted with the daunting task of modeling the awkward features of astronomical data, among which heteroscedastic (point-dependent) errors, intrinsic scatter, non-ignorable data collection…
The abundance of new cosmological data becoming available means that a wider range of cosmological models are testable than ever before. However, an important distinction must be made between parameter fitting and model selection. While…
Modern scientific cosmology pushes the boundaries of knowledge and the knowable. This is prompting questions on the nature of scientific knowledge. A central issue is what defines a 'good' model. When addressing global properties of the…
We reexamine constraints on the spatial size of closed toroidal models with cold dark matter and the cosmological constant from cosmic microwave background. We carry out Bayesian analyses using the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) data…
We study different one-parametric models of type Ia Supernova magnitude evolution on cosmic time scales. Constraints on cosmological and Supernova evolution parameters are obtained by combined fits on the actual data coming from Supernovae,…
Gravitational lensing shear has the potential to be the most powerful tool for constraining the nature of dark energy. However, accurate measurement of galaxy shear is crucial and has been shown to be non-trivial by the Shear TEsting…
A fully Bayesian approach is proposed for ultrahigh-dimensional nonparametric additive models in which the number of additive components may be larger than the sample size, though ideally the true model is believed to include only a small…
Accurate comparisons between theoretical models and experimental data are critical for scientific progress. However, inferred physical model parameters can vary significantly with the chosen physics model, highlighting the importance of…
In addition to shear and vorticity a homogeneous background may also exhibit anisotropic curvature. Here a class of spacetimes is shown to exist where the anisotropy is solely of the latter type, and the shear-free condition is supported by…
The most general homogeneous and isotropic statistical ensemble of linear scalar perturbations which are regular at early times, in a universe with only photons, baryons, neutrinos, and a cold dark matter (CDM) component, is described by a…
We extend the previously described CMB Gibbs sampling framework to allow for exact Bayesian analysis of anisotropic universe models, and apply this method to the 5-year WMAP temperature observations. This involves adding support for…
Bayesian model selection provides a formal method of determining the level of support for new parameters in a model. However, if there is not a specific enough underlying physical motivation for the new parameters it can be hard to assign…
We present a Bayesian analysis of large-scale structure and cosmic microwave background data to constrain the form of the primordial power spectrum. We have extended the usual presumption of a scale invariant spectrum to include: (i) a…
We introduce a new conservative test for quantifying the consistency of two or more datasets. The test is based on the Bayesian answer to the question, ``How much more probable is it that all my data were generated from the same model…