Astrostatistics

Astronomers live in era of “big data”. Whilst astronomers of a century ago collected a handful of photographic plates each night, modern astronomers collect thousands of images encoded by millions of pixels in the same time. Both the volume of data and the ever present desire to dig deeper into data sets has led to a growing interest in the use of statistical methods to interpret observations. This class will provide an introduction to the methods commonly used in understanding astronomical data sets, both in terms of theory and application. It is one six classes the department offers every fourth semester