Summer School in Statistics for Astronomers

Graduate students and researchers in astronomy were invited to attend the Summer School in Statistics for Astronomers XVI, hosted by the Penn State Center for Astrostatistics.

The summer school was held virtually from June 1–5, 2021, just before the SCMA VII research conference.

Lectures and tutorials were presented by a team of experienced professors in statistics, astronomy, computer science, and informatics. Instruction was interspersed with hands-on analysis of astronomical data with opportunities for in-depth discussion of methodological issues.

The topics included:

  • principles of probability and inference
  • maximum likelihood estimation
  • regression and model selection
  • bootstrap resampling
  • multivariate clustering and classification
  • Bayesian analysis
  • Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC)
  • time series analysis
  • spatial statistics
  • deep learning neural networks
  • machine learning with random forest