The AstroStat Slog » LSST http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog Weaving together Astronomy+Statistics+Computer Science+Engineering+Intrumentation, far beyond the growing borders Fri, 09 Sep 2011 17:05:33 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4 The GREAT08 Challenge http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2008/the-great08-challenge/ http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2008/the-great08-challenge/#comments Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:46:49 +0000 vlk http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2008/the-great08-challenge/ 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:

We are organizing a competition specifically targeting the statistics and computer science communities. The challenge is to measure cosmic shear at a level sufficient for future surveys such as the Large Synaptic Survey Telescope. Right now, we’ve stripped out most of complex observational issues leaving a pure statistical inference problem. The competition kicks off this summer, but we want to give possible participants a chance to prepare.

The website www.great08challenge.info will provide continual updates on the competition.

]]> http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2008/the-great08-challenge/feed/ 7 working together to tackle hard problems in astronomy http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2008/working-together-to-tackle-hard-problems-in-astronomy/ http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2008/working-together-to-tackle-hard-problems-in-astronomy/#comments Fri, 01 Feb 2008 17:45:04 +0000 hlee http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2008/how-astronomers-computer-scientists-and-statisticians-are-working-together-to-tackle-hard-problems-in-astronomy/ This is an edited email copy of Colloquium Announcement from Tufts University, MA. A must go for those live in Medford and Somerville, where Tufts Univ. is located and its vicinity.

Subject : Special Joint CS and Physics Colloquium
Title : How Astronomers, Computer Scientists and Statisticians are working together to tackle hard problems in astronomy
Speaker: Pavlos Protopapas
Date : Thursday February 7
Time : 3:15 pm
Place : Nelson Auditorium, Anderson Hall (Click for the map, 200 College Ave, Medford, MA, I think)
Abstract:
New astronomical surveys such as Pan-STARRS and LSST are under development and will collect petabytes of data. These surveys will image large areas of sky repeatedly to great depth, and will detect vast numbers of moving, variably bright, and transient objects. The data product of these surveys is series of observations taken over time, or light-curves.

The IIC has established an inter-disciplinary Center for Time Series with an immediate focus on astronomy. I will present three research topics currently being pursued at the IIC that require expertise from astronomy, computer science and statistics. These are: identifying novel astronomical phenomena in large light-curve datasets, searching for rare phenomena such as extra-solar planets, and efficiently searching for significant events such as occultations of stars by small objects in the outer reaches of our solar system.

Pavlos Protopapas is a senior scientist at the IIC and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. His research interests spans the outer solar system, extra-solar planets and gravitational lensing. He specializes in analyzing large collections of astronomical data, with a toolbox drawn from data-mining, computer science and statistics.

]]> http://hea-www.harvard.edu/AstroStat/slog/2008/working-together-to-tackle-hard-problems-in-astronomy/feed/ 0