Statistics For Astrophysics

​​​​​ ​This volume provides an overview of the field of Astrostatistics understood as the sub-discipline dedicated to the statistical analysis of astronomical data. It presents examples of the application of the various methodologies now available to current open issues in astronomical research. The technical aspects related to the scientific analysis of the upcoming petabyte-scale databases are emphasized given the importance that scalable Knowledge Discovery techniques will have for the full exploitation of these databases. Based on the 2011 Astrostatistics and Data Mining in Large Astronomical Databases conference and school, this volume gathers examples of the work by leading authors in the areas of Astrophysics and Statistics, including a significant contribution from the various teams that prepared for the processing and analysis of the Gaia data.

This book introduces “Astrostatistics” as a subject in its own right with rewarding examples, including work by the authors with galaxy and Gamma Ray Burst data to engage the reader. This includes a comprehensive blending of Astrophysics and Statistics. The first chapter’s coverage of preliminary concepts and terminologies for astronomical phenomenon will appeal to both Statistics and Astrophysics readers as helpful context. Statistics concepts covered in the book provide a methodological framework. A unique feature is the inclusion of different possible sources of astronomical data, as well as software packages for converting the raw data into appropriate forms for data analysis. Readers can then use the appropriate statistical packages for their particular data analysis needs. The ideas of statistical inference discussed in the book help readers determine how to apply statistical tests. The authors cover different applications of statistical techniques already developed or specifically introduced for astronomical problems, including regression techniques, along with their usefulness for data set problems related to size and dimension. Analysis of missing data is an important part of the book because of its significance for work with astronomical data. Both existing and new techniques related to dimension reduction and clustering are illustrated through examples. There is detailed coverage of applications useful for classification, discrimination, data mining and time series analysis. Later chapters explain simulation techniques useful for the development of physical models where it is difficult or impossible to collect data. Finally, coverage of the many R programs for techniques discussed makes this book a fantastic practical reference. Readers may apply what they learn directly to their data sets in addition to the data sets included by the authors.

Modern Statistical Methods for Astronomy: With R Applications.

This 2006 textbook provides a concise introduction to the key concepts and tools of statistical mechanics. It also covers advanced topics such as non-relativistic quantum field theory and numerical methods. After introducing classical analytical techniques, such as cluster expansion and Landau theory, the authors present important numerical methods with applications to magnetic systems, Lennard-Jones fluids and biophysics. Quantum statistical mechanics is discussed in detail and applied to Bose-Einstein condensation and topics in astrophysics and cosmology. In order to describe emergent phenomena in interacting quantum systems, canonical non-relativistic quantum field theory is introduced and then reformulated in terms of Feynman integrals. Combining the authors' many years' experience of teaching courses in this area, this textbook is ideal for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in physics, chemistry and mathematics.

This book is the result of the 2019 session of the School of Statistics for Astrophysics (Stat4Astro) that took place on October, 6 to 11, 2019, at Autrans near Grenoble, in France. The topic of this fourth session was the time series that, from celestial mechanics to gravitational waves, from exoplanets to quasars, concern nearly all the astrophysics. Variable phenomena are ubiquitous in the Universe: periodic (orbits, cycles, pulses, rotations...), transient (explosions, bursts, stellar activity...), random (accretion, ejection...) or regular (apparent motions...). The detection, the characterization and the classification of these variabilities is a discipline of statistics called time series analysis. Time series analysis is not new in astrophysics, but has been the subject of major developments in many other disciplines (meteorology, finance, economy, medical sciences...). In this book, you will find lectures from two statisticians who are experts in this field. Gérard Grégoire, who has a long experience in econometrics and made a huge contribution to both this book and the session. He covers the basic elements of classical L2 time series, in the time domain as well as in the frequency domain, for univariate and multivariate series, and provides also tools for statistical inference. He gives an extensive presentation of ARMA and ARIMA series, and addresses some related advanced topics. He also devotes a chapter to linear Gaussian state space models and Kalman filtering that will be helpful to follow the last chapter written by Éric Moulines and collaborators: this final chapter is dedicated to state space models in a general framework and sequential Monte Carlo methods to leverage recursions generalizing the Kalman recursions for filtering and smoothing. Many practical exercises are given using the R environment.

Modern astronomers encounter a vast range of challenging statistical problems, yet few are familiar with the wealth of techniques developed by statisticians. Conversely, few statisticians deal with the compelling problems confronted in astronomy. Astrostatistics bridges this gap. Authored by a statistician-astronomer team, it provides professionals and advanced students in both fields with exposure to issues of mutual interest. In the first half of the book the authors introduce statisticians to stellar, galactic, and cosmological astronomy and discuss the complex character of astronomical data. For astronomers, they introduce the statistical principles of nonparametrics, multivariate analysis, time series analysis, density estimation, and resampling methods. The second half of the book is organized by statistical topic. Each chapter contains examples of problems encountered astronomical research and highlights methodological issues. The final chapter explores some controversial issues in astronomy that have a strong statistical component. The authors provide an extensive bibliography and references to software for implementing statistical methods. The "marriage" of astronomy and statistics is a natural one and benefits both disciplines. Astronomers need the tools and methods of statistics to interpret the vast amount of data they generate, and the issues related to astronomical data pose intriguing challenges for statisticians. Astrostatistics paves the way to improved statistical analysis of astronomical data and provides a common ground for future collaboration between the two fields.

This book includes the lectures given during the third session of the School of Statistics for Astrophysics that took place at Autrans, near Grenoble, in France, in October 2017. The subject is Bayesian Methodology. The interest of this statistical approach in astrophysics probably comes from its necessity and its success in determining the cosmological parameters from observations, especially from the cosmic background luctuations. The cosmological community has thus been very active in this field for many years. But the Bayesian methodology, complementary to the more classical frequentist one, has many applications in physics in general due to its ability to incorporate a priori knowledge into inference, such as uncertainty brought by the observational processes. The Bayesian approach becomes more and more widespread in the astrophysical literature. This book contains statistics courses on basic to advanced methods with practical exercises using the R environment, by leading experts in their field. This covers the foundations of Bayesian inference, Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, model building, Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) and Bayesian nonparametric inference and clustering.