36-494 Astrostatistics
6 units, Carnegie Mellon University
Since a young age, many of us have pondered the vastness and beauty of the Universe as we gazed up at the night sky. Planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and beyond have fascinated humanity for centuries. It turns out it also provides a plethora of interesting and complex statistical problems. In this course, problems in astronomy, cosmology, and astrophysics are going provide motivation for learning about some advanced statistical methodology. Possible topics include computational statistics, topological data analysis, nonparametric regression, spatial statistics, and statistical learning. While exploring newer statistical methodology, we will get to sample a variety of problems that appeal to astrostatisticians Statistical problems related to exoplanets planets orbiting stars outside our Solar System, the largescale structure of the Universe the Cosmic Web, dark matter over 80 of the matter in the Universe is thought to be invisible, Type Ia supernova a dying star eats its companion star until explodes, cosmic microwave background a.k.a. baby pictures of the Universe are some possibilities. This course will be suitable for advanced undergraduate statistics majors through Ph.D. level statistics students, and astronomy Ph.D. students with some background in statistics.
Prerequisites: 36-401 (min C)
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