The AstroStat Slog

When I begin to subscribe arXiv/astro-ph and arXiv/stat, although only for a year I listed astro-ph papers featuring relatively advanced statistics, I also kept more papers relevant to astrostatistics beyond astro-ph or introducing hot topics in statistics and computer science for astronomical data applications. While creating my own arXiv as follows, I had a hope to write up short introductions of statistics that are unlikely known to most of astronomers (like my MADS) and matching subjects/targets in astronomy. I thought such effort could spawn new collaborations or could expand understanding of statistics among astronomers (see Magic Crystal). Well, I couldn’t catch up the growth rate and it’s about time to terminate the hope. However, I thought some papers can be useful to some slog subscribers. I hope they do. Continue reading ‘arxiv list’ »

X={ primer, tutorial, cookbook, Introduction, guidebook, 101, for dummies, …}

I’ve heard many times about the lack of documentation of this extensive data analysis system, ciao. I saw people still using ciao 3.4 although the new version 4 has been available for many months. Although ciao is not the only tool for Chandra data analysis, it was specifically designed for it. Therefore, I expect it being used frequently with popularity. But the reality is against my expectation. Whatever (fierce) discussion I’ve heard, it has been irrelevant to me because ciao is not intended for statistical analysis. Then, out of sudden, after many months, a realization hit me. ciao is different from other data analysis systems and softwares. This difference has been a hampering factor of introducing ciao outside the Chandra scientist community and of gaining popularity. This difference was the reason I often got lost in finding suitable documentations. Continue reading ‘Where is ciao X ?’ »