Andy/Peter/Greg -- Important/Urgent

From: Robert A. Knop Jr. (robert.a.knop@vanderbilt.edu)
Date: Thu May 01 2003 - 04:33:28 PDT

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    On Wed, Apr 30, 2003 at 08:22:45PM -0700, Greg Aldering wrote:
    > I understand that it is hard to code for all the different types of
    > observational situations which may arise, but to remove from the Hubble
    > diagram a SN based on such hard-won and expensive data, without first
    > imposing every realistic constraint on the spectral fits, just doesn't
    > make sense to me.

    This message is mainly for Andy and Peter, but I want to make sure Greg
    sees it since he's active in this discussion too.

    Several messages back I asked this question, but I think it got lost in
    all the back-n-forth.

    Way back when Andy sent me a list of "Definative Ias", "Probable Ias",
    and "Dunnos". The primary subsets (used for most of the analysis in the
    paper) omit the "Dunnos", but keeps the Probables. Subset 3 (used only
    in the systematic error section for "type contamination") omits the
    Probables.

    My question is: are the 9878 and 98104 spectra consistent with the
    Probable Ias? If so, then all we have to do is remove them from Subset
    3, and the only section which can change at all is that systematic error
    section. We leave them on the Hubble diagram for the rest of the paper,
    and nothing else in the analysis changes. This is a low pain way out,
    and indeed I would prefer this way out to arguing for another week or
    two about whether or not they should be in the primary subset or
    nowhere. (That is, if in fact this is honest it does just make sense to
    put them in Subset 3 given what we know today.)

    Even if this is a "too conservative" approach, and we later decide they
    should have been in the primary subset, for purposes of estimating a
    systematic error that's not such a terrible thing.

    -Rob

    -- 
    --Prof. Robert Knop
      Department of Physics & Astronomy, Vanderbilt University
      robert.a.knop@vanderbilt.edu
    


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