Astrostatistics for Fun and Profit

A couple of astrostatistics related announcements:

1) The Astrostatistics & Astroinformatics Portal is open.

"The ASAIP provides searchable abstracts to Recent Papers in the field, several discussion Forums, various resources for researchers, brief Articles by experts, and lists of Meetings. The site will be used for public outreach by four organizations: International Astrostatistics Association (IAA, to be affiliated with the International Statistical Institute), American Astronomical Society Working Group in Astroinformatics and Astrostatistics, International Astronomical Union Working Group in Astrostatistics and Astroinformatics, Information and Statistical Sciences Consortium of the planned Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST/ISSC)."

I am reliable informed that the most popular entry is the dreaded "Beware the KS test!"

2) Annual Summer School in Statistics for Astronomers

This is a week long intensive course in statistics, targeted at intermediate level graduate students.
It is very good and fills fast.
As I get older and wiser, I am inclined to think that statistics in general, and this level of applied stars in particular, is the single most practical tool that PhD level physical scientists have at their disposal.

First Announcement

Summer School in Statistics for Astronomers IX
Penn State University
June 3-7, 2013

Registration Deadline: May 3, 2013
or or earlier if the enrollment limit reaches.

http://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su13/

Penn State is please to continue its annual Summer Schools in Statistics
designed for graduate students and researchers in astronomy. The ninth
summer school is an intensive week covering basic statistical inference,
several fields of applied statistics, and the R computing environment. A
repertoire of well-established techniques applicable to observational
astronomy and physics are developed. Classroom instruction is
interspersed with hands-on analysis of astronomical data using the
open-source R software package. The course is taught by a team of
statistics and astronomy professors with opportunity for discussion of
methodological issues. The program starts on Monday morning (June 3,
2013) and ends on Friday (June 7, 2013) at 5PM.

The topics to be covered include:

* Exploratory data analysis
* Hypothesis testing and parameter estimation
* Regression
* Bootstrap resampling
* Model selection & goodness-of-fit
* Maximum likelihood methods & Bayes' Theorem
* Non-parametric methods
* Monte Carlo methods
* Bayesian analysis
* Spatial statistics
* Time series

Details and registration form are available at
http://astrostatistics.psu.edu/su13/.

Please address questions to:
Eric Feigelson
Center for Astrostatistics, Penn State
edf@astro.psu.edu