Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Eliminating Pre-Conceived Notions

Even though we have errors in only magnitudes and isochrone data in magnitudes, and my code if fact fits in magnitude-magnitude space, for some reason I and many other papers still primarily think and speak of color-magnitude space. I need to change my thought process to focus around magnitude-magnitude (Magnitude^3 when including U) space.

This means the binary fraction also introduces errors in U and B. I am near completing the protocol for computing probabilities accounting for a binary population.

I am also doubtful as to my need to factor in the initial mass function. Does it put unproductive weight on lower stars?

As to the weighting topic, I am trying to determine the Bayesian logic behind assigning a weight. I am thinking the logic behind it deals with the certainty which we believe the star came from the cluster. If a star is in an un-populated region on the CMD and away from the isochrone, the probability quickly drops to zero and is barely effected by changes is the parameters, so it does not have any importance anyway.

I am also trying to understand working with three dimensional arrays to eliminate a for-loop. My brain does not like wrapping itself around what I need to do. I have read some good tutorials and believe I will manage it soon.

2 comments:

  1. Check out chapter 8 of Sivia for dealing with "outliers."

    Unfortunately there's no way to do proper vector-based computations in IDL in more than 2 dimensions. Check out cmapply.pro for the best method of dealing with > 2D.

    http://cow.physics.wisc.edu/~craigm/idl/down/cmapply.pro

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  2. I've tested the operations I'm performing at the command line and they work, I just some times lose track of what is in what dimension, and getting things to line up.

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