Re: updated I-band paper

From: Ariel Goobar (ariel@physto.se)
Date: Tue Dec 09 2003 - 04:59:57 PST

  • Next message: Serena Nobili: "Re: updated I-band paper"

    Hi Chris et al,

    Serena is working on finishing some important details of
    I-band paper: redoing the LC fits with the Sofie J-band
    K-corrections for the one point for 99Q (thanks Chris for the
    transmission
    curves!) and recomputing the
    chisquare for the color-color diagrams in section 6 corresponding to Fig
    17, where we concluded the numbers in the text are not really what we
    want to use to test the IG dust hypothesis. In the mean time,
    I thought I would comment on your comment below, with respect to the way
    that the systematic uncertainty on trhe high-z LC fit is done, see
    below.
    >>
    >> Moreover given the large difference in chisq between the best fit one
    >> and
    >> the next (at least for 2000fr and 1999ff), I do not think is really
    >> fair
    >> to average together the results up to chisq_min+3.
    >> As you said, this will not change the results anyway, but I don't
    >> think
    >> averaging results from "worse" fits, would give a more robust
    >> estimate of
    >> the maximum.
    >>
    >
    > I'm not sure and I'd like to explore this point further. Ask yourself
    > the following question. Why would you use one sample to compute the
    > first moment of a distribution and then a larger sample to compute a
    > higher order moment. This is what you have done. You have used one
    > point (the one with the lowest chi-sqaure) to compute the "average",
    > but you use a larger sample (the ones with chisq_min+3) to compute the
    > RMS. I'd argue that you should the same sample to do both. I.e
    > compute the mean, median, standard deviation) from the same sample.

    Let me give you another analogy, that I think is closer to what
    Serena has done. Imagine that, instead of using the chi2
    minimum to give our best fit omega-lambda cosmology, we would do
    what you propose: compute the "mean" cosmology from all the
    solutions that are within chi2_min +3. Wouldn't that be a very
    odd procedure? The "orthodox" thing is to find your chi2 minimum
    and establish your parameter uncertainty by looking at chi2_min +- 1,
    for the 68% CL 1-dim case. This is exactly how Serena is trying
    to assess the SYSTEMATIC uncertainty (note, not RMS/STATISTICAL
    uncertainty) from her template "grid search" fit to the data.

    Cheers,
                Ariel

    ___________________________________________________________________
    Ariel Goobar (www.physto.se/~ariel)
    Department of Physics, Stockholm University
    AlbaNova University Center, SE-106 91 Stockholm, SWEDEN
    tel: +46 8 55378659 fax: +46 8 55378601



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