Summer School in Statistics for Astronomers V

June 1-6, 2009

The fifth annual Penn State Summer School in Statistics for Astronomers will be held at Penn State. This is a 6-day course in fundamental statistical inference designed to provide physical scientists, and graduate students, with a strong conceptual foundation in modern statistics and to develop a repertoire of well-established techniques applicable to observational astronomy and physics. Classroom instruction is interspersed with hands-on analysis of astronomical data using the public-domain R software package. The course is taught by a team of statistics and astronomy professors with opportunity for discussion of methodological issues.

Statistical techniques covered include:

exploratory data analysis
hypothesis testing and parameter estimation
regression & confidence interval estimation
Model selection & goodness-of-fit
maximum likelihood methods & Bayes' Theorem
non-parametric methods
Monte Carlo methods
Poisson processes
time series

The 2009 Summer School will be modeled on the last four Penn State Summer Schools and the two Indian Institute of Astrophysics-Penn State Summer School; see 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 lecture notes for the Penn State Summer Schools.

Local information:
The 2009 summer school will be held on the Pennsylvania State University's University Park Campus located in State College, Pennsylvania, USA. The town of State College and the university campus combine to offer a relaxed, college town atmosphere with many shops, restaurants and points of interest. Recreational opportunities abound including fine golf courses, tennis courts, gymnasiums and swimming facilities. For maps and tourism information visit the Central Pennsylvania Convention & Visitors Bureau online.

Wireless Internet Access/Computer Information:
Wireless internet access from personal laptops require installation of a VPN communication software from the web site: http://www.work.psu.edu/access/vpn after arriving at Penn State and receiving a temporary computer user id and password at the on-site registration desk. E-mail and internet are available via a computer lab at the Willard Building as well as the business computers at Days Inn Penn State. Use mobility.up.psu.edu as vpn host.