The AstroStat Slog

via David van Dyk, information about 3 events in astrostatistics hosted by Penn State’s Center for Astrostatistics:

1. Summer School in Statistics for Astronomers VII (June 6-10, 2011)
2. Pre-conference Tutorials (June 11-12, 2011)
3. Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy V (June 13-17, 2011)*

*Web site: http://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su11scma5/

Registration is now open until May 6
(Summer School registration may close earlier if the enrollment limit is reached)

Contributed papers for the SCMA V conference are welcome

Summer School in Statistics for Astronomers: The seventh summer school is an intensive week covering basic statistical inference, several fields of applied statistics, and hands-on experience with the R computing environment. Topics include: exploratory data analysis, hypothesis testing, parameter estimation, regression, bootstrap resampling, model selection & goodness-of-fit, maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods, nonparametrics, spatial processes, and times series. Instructors are mostly faculty members in statistics.

Pre-conference tutorials: Instruction in four areas of astrostatistical interest presented during the weekend between the Summer School and SCMA V conference. Topics are: Bayesian computation and MCMC; data mining; R for astronomers; and wavelets for image analysis. Instructors are members of the SCMA V Scientific Organizing Committee.

SCMA V conference: Held every five years, SCMA conferences are the premier cross-disciplinary forum for research statisticians and astronomers to discuss methodological issues of mutual interest. Session topics include: statistical modeling in astronomy, Bayesian analysis across astronomy; Bayesian cosmology; data mining and informatics; sparsity; interpreting astrophysical simulations; time domain astronomy; spatial and image analysis; and future directions for astrostatistics. Invited lectures will be followed by cross-disciplinary commentaries. The conference welcomes contributed papers from statisticians and astronomers.

Visit http://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su11scma5/ for more information and registration

Contacts:
Eric Feigelson, Dept. of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Penn State,б edf@astro.psu.edu
G. Jogesh Babu, Dept. of Statistics, Penn State, babu@stat.psu.edu

From Jogesh Babu:

First Announcement

Summer School in Statistics for Astronomers VI
June 7-12, 2010
with a supplement on Statistics and Computation for Astronomical Surveys
June 12-14, 2010
Registration Deadline: May 3, 2010 or when the enrollment limit reaches.
Penn State University

http://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su10/

Continue reading ‘AstroStat Summer School [Announcement]’ »

From Jogesh Babu comes this announcement:

Summer School in Statistics for Astronomers V
June 1-6, 2009
Penn State University
http://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su09/

Continue reading ‘[Announce] AstroStat Summer School at Penn State’ »

Hyunsook recently said that she wished that there were “some astronomical data depositories where no data reduction is required but one can apply various statistical analyses to the data in the depository to learn and compare statistical methods”. With the caveat that there really is no such thing (every dataset will require case specific reduction; standard processing and reduction are inadequate in all but the simplest of cases), here is a brief list: Continue reading ‘Reduced and Processed Data’ »

From Prajval Shastri of IIAp comes news of the sequel to last year’s Astrostatistics school at Kavalur, India:

The Indian Institute of Astrophysics and the Center for Astrostatistics, Pennsylvania State University (USA) are jointly organising an 8-day school in fundamental statistical inference as applicable to astrophysical problems during 9-16 July, 2008 (www.iiap.res.in/astrostat). The school is intended for practising astrophysics researchers at all levels. Details may be found on the website of the school.

Continue reading ‘AstroStatistics School in India’ »

Since Summer 2005, G. Jogesh Babu (Statistics) and Eric Feigelson (Astronomy) have organized lectures and lab sessions on statistics for astronomers and physicists. Lecturers are professors from Penn State statistics department and invited renown scientists from different countries. Students show diverse demography as well. Within a week or so, students listen Statistics 101 to recently published statistical theories particularly applied to astronomical data. They also learn how to use R, a statistical software and script language to perform statistics they learn through lectures. Past two years, this summer school proved its uniqueness and usefulness. More information on the upcoming school can be found at http://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su07/index.html and other topics regarding astrostatistics at Center for AstroStatistics at Penn State.