Basic Statistics: Techniques of Observational Astronomy AST3722C
Basic Statistics: Techniques of Observational Astronomy AST3722C
Astronomy
AST3722C
Basic Statistics
We use statistics to analyze a set of observations in order to evaluate just what we can
conclude from those data.
Imagine we have a collection of data: 4.45, 4.50, 4.50, 4.55, 4.55, 4.55, 4.60, 4.65, 4.65
Important characteristics:
• Mean : the “average” value:
4.556
Median: The individual value from the collection such that ½ the observations are
less and ½ are greater:
4.55
Note that the median must be extracted from the dataset, not simply calculated.
• Mean : 5.006
• Median: 4.55
so the median is unaffected by a single very low or very high outlier (i.e. a point
that is way out of the main group of points).
How do we get an estimate of how good are data are?
• (Simple) Deviation
• Mean Deviation
the N-1 reflects the loss of one degree of freedom (if we had a single data point
mean deviation would be meaningless).
• Variance
or
which is a better estimator for random errors than mean deviation.
• Data collections where a value can never be less than 0 may have a Poisson
distribution.
• An example is “photon” statistics: the number of photons that can arrive at a
given moment can be 0, 1, 2, … etc. but never less than 0
Assume a straight line fit to some data. Let y = focus value, x = temperature
The errors can be estimated from:
Interpretation: At 0 F the focus will be (about) 31000. The change in focus with
temperature is about –40 counts per degree.
Correlation Coefficient
It is useful to look at the correlation coefficient, rho, between x and y. A correlation
coefficient of 0 means that x and y are not correlated, a value of +/- 1 means the
quantities are positively/negatively correlated.