Related papers: Tainted Evidence: Cosmological Model Selection vs.…
Bayesian model selection is a tool to decide whether the introduction of a new parameter is warranted by data. I argue that the usual sampling statistic significance tests for a null hypothesis can be misleading, since they do not take into…
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…
In astro-ph/0702542v2, Linder and Miquel seek to criticize the use of Bayesian model selection for data analysis and for survey forecasting and design. Their discussion is based on three serious misunderstandings of the conceptual…
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…
The estimation of cosmological parameters from precision observables is an important industry with crucial ramifications for particle physics. This article discusses the statistical methods presently used in cosmological data analysis,…
Cosmological parameter estimation from forthcoming experiments promise to reach much greater precision than current constraints. As statistical errors shrink, the required control over systematic errors increases. Therefore, models or…
Theories can be represented as statistical models for empirical testing. There is a vast literature on model selection and multimodel inference that focuses on how to assess which statistical model, and therefore which theory, best fits the…
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…
Mathematical models are an essential component of quantitative science. They generate predictions about the future, based on information available in the present. In the spirit of Occam's razor, simpler is better; should two models make…
There has been increasing interest by cosmologists in applying Bayesian techniques, such as Bayesian Evidence, for model selection. A typical example is in assessing whether observational data favour a cosmological constant over evolving…
The task of parametric model selection is cast in terms of a statistical mechanics on the space of probability distributions. Using the techniques of low-temperature expansions, we arrive at a systematic series for the Bayesian posterior…
We review some of the common methods for model selection: the goodness of fit, the likelihood ratio test, Bayesian model selection using Bayes factors, and the classical as well as the Bayesian information theoretic approaches. We…
Observational astronomy is plagued with selection effects that must be taken into account when interpreting data from astronomical surveys. Because of the physical limitations of observing time and instrument sensitivity, datasets are…
The general idea of determining cosmological parameters with gravitational lensing statistics is outlined, and then recent work---with an emphasis on applicability to all cosmological models, observational bias, better statistics and…
Constraints on cosmological parameters depend on the set of parameters chosen to define the model which is compared with observational data. I use the Akaike and Bayesian information criteria to carry out cosmological model selection, in…
In these lectures I cover a number of topics in cosmological data analysis. I concentrate on general techniques which are common in cosmology, or techniques which have been developed in a cosmological context. In fact they have very general…
We study how well perturbative forward modeling can constrain cosmological parameters compared to conventional analyses. We exploit the fact that in perturbation theory the field-level posterior can be computed analytically in the limit of…
It is known that modeling uncertainties and astrophysical foregrounds can potentially introduce appreciable bias in the deduced values of cosmological parameters. While it is commonly assumed that these uncertainties will be accounted for…
The advent of large data-set in cosmology has meant that in the past 10 or 20 years our knowledge and understanding of the Universe has changed not only quantitatively but also, and most importantly, qualitatively. Cosmologists rely on data…
What do the data, as distinguished from cosmological models, tell us about cosmological parameters that determined the model of the universe? In this paper, we address this question in the context of the WMAP angular power spectra for the…