Workshop on Astrostatistics

7 Oct 2024, 08:30 → 9 Oct 2024, 22:40 Europe/Rome

Aula Ovest (Osservatorio Astrofisico di Catania)

Marco Montalto (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

INAF-OACT is hosting an INAF-wide hybrid Workshop on Astrostatistics during Monday-Wednesday October 7-9, 2024. It will be held in-person at INAF-OACT and will be simultaneously broadcast to all INAF institutes via Zoom.

This workshop is oriented towards graduate students and young researchers who have interests in the principles and practical use of modern statistics for astronomical research. Students attend hybrid lectures and complete Jupyter notebook tutorials in the R statistical software environment associated with the lectures. Slack channels are available for assistance with the tutorials and for astrostatistical consultation on personal research.

Registration is required but there is no cost for the Workshop. It is not an official university course but a certification of participation will be provided.

Participants should expect to be involved with the Workshop full-time during the 3-day course. This includes 5 hours lecture and 2-3 hours individual work on Jupyter tutorials each day. Individual Slack channel research consultation will be available after the Workshop on Thursday October 10. Didactic meterial (slides in pdf and R tutorials in ipynb, html, pdf formats) will be provided during the course.

The instructor, Eric D. Feigelson, Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics and of Statistics at Penn State University (USA), has been working with statisticians for four decades. He has co-organized Penn State Summer Schools in Statistics for Astronomers, co-organized research conferences Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy, was lead author of the graduate textbook Modern Statistical Methods for Astronomy with R Applications, served as inaugural President of IAU Commission on Astroinformatics and Astrostatistics, and is now Statistics Editor for the American Astronomical Society Journals. Andrew Pellegrino, Penn State graduate student, will assist participants with the R Jupyter tutorials.

Monday 7 October

09:30 → 10:00 Welcome and organization

10:00 → 10:50 Why astrostatistics? (Intro_Astrostat.pdf)

10:50 → 11:10 Coffee break

11:10 → 12:00 Introduction to R (Intro_R.pdf, Tutorial_1_IntroR.R, Tutorial_1_IntroR.ipynb)

14:30 → 15:20 Nonparametric statistics (Nonpar_stat.pdf)

15:20 → 15:40 Coffee break

15:40 → 17:00 Nonparametric density estimation (Nonpar_smooth.pdf, Tutorial_2_Local_regression.R, Tutorial_2_Local_regression.ipynb)

Tuesday 8 October

09:30 → 10:20 Statistical inference and regression (Inference_regression.pdf, Tutorial_3_Regression.R, Tutorial_3_Regression.ipynb)

10:20 → 10:40 Coffee break

10:40 → 12:00 Statistical inference and regression (Inference_regression.pdf, Tutorial_3_Regression.R, Tutorial_3_Regression.ipynb)

14:30 → 15:20 Bayesian inference (Bayesian_infererence.pdf)

15:20 → 15:40 Coffee break

15:40 → 17:00 Clustering & classification (Clust_class.pdf)

Wednesday 9 October

09:30 → 10:20 Clustering & classification (Tutorial_4_Clust_class.R, Tutorial_4_Clust_class.ipynb)

10:20 → 10:40 Coffee break

10:40 → 12:00 Time series analysis (Time_series.pdf, Tutorial_5_Time_series.R, Tutorial_5_Time_series.ipynb)

14:30 → 15:20 Research: AutoRegressive Planet Search (AR_planet_search.pdf)

15:20 → 15:40 Coffee break

15:40 → 16:30 Best statistical practices for astronomy (Best_stat_practices.pdf)

16:30 → 17:00 Discussion: Statistical methodology in astronomical research