The AstroStat Slog

There is a new report from Bernabei et al. (arXiv:0804.2741) of the direct detection of the effects of Dark Matter that is causing a lot of buzz. (The Bad Astronomer has a good summary.) They find yearly modulation in their detected scintillation rate that matches what you would expect if the Earth were rushing through Galactic Dark Matter as it goes around the Sun. They have worked out the significance of the modulation to be 8.2 sigma. Significant! But significant of what? Continue reading ‘Is 8-sigma significant enough for you?’ »

Grand statistical challenges seem to be all the rage nowadays. Following on the heels of the Banff Challenge (which dealt with figuring out how to set the bounds for the signal intensity that would result from the Higgs boson) comes the GREAT08 Challenge (arxiv/0802.1214) to deal with one of the major issues in observational Cosmology, the effect of dark matter. As Douglas Applegate puts it: Continue reading ‘The GREAT08 Challenge’ »