VOSTAT

Statistical Analysis for the Virtual Observatory

VOStat is a web based service providing a suite of tools allowing astronomers to use both simple and sophisticated statistical routines on datasets. The tools use a large open-source statistical computing language and environment called R. Tabular datasets can be uploaded in ASCII, VOTABLE, or FITS binary formats. The supported data file extnesions include .txt, .dat, .csv, .vot, .fits. The data can also be retrieved by entering a URL. The statistical computations are performed by the VOStat server and results returned to the user.

The user interacts with VOStat through the VOStat interactive Web page.

Only a small portion of R functionality are available through VOStat. Additional functionalities will be added in the future. VOStat is also a learning tool, as R code corresponding to each analysis is also displayed. A text box is provided for advanced users to input their own R code.

VOStat was originally developed by a research team led by Pennsylvania State University that included members from California Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University, and supported by National Science Foundation's Focused Research Group grant (DMS-0101360, Principal investigator, G. J. Babu). The new architecture for VOStat was developed for the Center for Astrostatistics by Dr. Arnab Chakraborty.

Science demos:
Hyades    
Exploring outliers (colors from Palomar-QUEST)

Sample datasets     help files (Under construction)

Disclaimer