Feb 13th, 2008| 03:41 pm | Posted by hlee
Last week, I was at Tufts colloquium and happened to have a conversation with a computer scientist about density based clustering. I understood density as probabilistic density and was recollecting a paper by Fraley and Raftery (Model-Based Clustering, Discriminant Analysis, and Density Estimation, JASA, 2002, 97, p.458) and other similar papers I saw in engineering journals like IEEE transactions. For a few moments, I felt uncomfortable and she explained that density meant “how dense observations are.” Density based clustering was meant to be distance based clustering, like k-means, minimum spanning tree, most likely nonparametric approaches. Continue reading ‘language barrier’ »
Oct 5th, 2007| 01:38 pm | Posted by vlk
As Alanna pointed out, astronomers and statisticians mean different things when they say “model”. To complicate matters, we have also started to use another term called “data model”. Continue reading ‘model vs model’ »
Tags:
data,
data model,
DM,
IVOA,
Jargon,
model,
virtual observatory,
VOA Category:
Astro,
Cross-Cultural,
Data Processing,
Jargon |
2 Comments
Jun 18th, 2007| 03:06 pm | Posted by hlee
From arxiv/astro-ph:0706.1988,
Lectures on Astronomy, Astrophysics, and Cosmology looks helpful to statisticians who like to know astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. The lecture note starts from introducing fundamentals of astronomy, UNITS!!!, and its history. It also explains astronomical measures such as distances and their units, luminosity, and temperature; HR diagram (astronomers’ summary diagram); stellar evolution; and relevant topics in cosmology. At least, a third of the article will be useful to grasp a rough idea of astronomy as a scientific subject beyond colorful pictures. Statisticians who are keen to cosmology are recommended to read beyond.
This is not a high energy lecture note; therefore, statisticians interested in high energy are encouraged to visit Astro Jargon for Statisticians and CHASC.
May 25th, 2007| 11:51 am | Posted by vlk
It seems to be necessary to devise a good system of categories beforehand with wordpress, because plain tags are not (yet?) implemented. Categories can only be defined by the admin, so it is useful to have as comprehensive a list as possible. I suggest the following set:
Continue reading ‘Categories’ »
Jan 29th, 2007| 02:19 am | Posted by hlee
The Statistics Jargon for Astronomers has revived (Jan. 2007) but now, it is barely breathing. Effortlessly search engines and Internet encyclopedia provide details on statistical terminologies for astronomers, which cast the largest difficulty on this jargon website. We urge both astronomers and statisticians’ contributions for compiling this lexicon and their discussions on both subjects.