7,745 research outputs found
Confidence Intervals and Upper Bounds for Small Signals in the Presence of Background Noise
We discuss a new method for setting limits on small signals in the presence
of background noise. The method is based on a combination of a two dimensional
confidence region and the large sample approximation to the likelihood ratio
test statistic. It automatically quotes upper limits for small signals and
two-sided confidence intervals for larger samples. We show that this method
gives the correct coverage and also has good power.Comment: Document was created by Sciword V3.0, it consists of one main
document (lrt.tex), eight figures (figure1.eps - figure8.eps) and one table
(table.tex). Paper was revised after being accepted for publication in NIM A
Paper was revised after being accepted for publication in NIM
Limits and Confidence Intervals in the Presence of Nuisance Parameters
We study the frequentist properties of confidence intervals computed by the
method known to statisticians as the Profile Likelihood. It is seen that the
coverage of these intervals is surprisingly good over a wide range of possible
parameter values for important classes of problems, in particular whenever
there are additional nuisance parameters with statistical or systematic errors.
Programs are available for calculating these intervals.Comment: 6 figure
Spectrophotometry of nearby field galaxies: the data
We have obtained integrated and nuclear spectra, as well as U, B, R surface
photometry, for a representative sample of 196 nearby galaxies. These galaxies
span the entire Hubble sequence in morphological type, as well as a wide range
of luminosities (M_B=-14 to -22). Here we present the spectrophotometry for
these galaxies. The selection of the sample and the U, B, R surface photometry
is described in a companion paper (Paper I). Our goals for the project include
measuring the current star formation rates and metallicities of these galaxies,
and elucidating their star formation histories, as a function of luminosity and
morphology. We thereby extend the work of Kennicutt (1992a) to lower luminosity
systems. We anticipate that our study will be useful as a benchmark for studies
of galaxies at high redshift.
We describe the observing, data reduction and calibration techniques, and
demonstrate that our spectrophotometry agrees well with that of Kennicutt. The
spectra span the range 3550--7250 A at a resolution (FWHM) of ~6 A, and have an
overall relative spectrophotometric accuracy of +/- 6 per cent. We present a
spectrophotometric atlas of integrated and nuclear rest-frame spectra, as well
as tables of equivalent widths and synthetic colors.
We study the correlations of galaxy properties determined from the spectra
and images. Our findings include: (1) galaxies of a given morphological class
display a wide range of continuum shapes and emission line strengths if a broad
range of luminosities are considered, (2) emission line strengths tend to in-
crease and continua tend to get bluer as the luminosity decreases, and (3) the
scatter on the general correlation between nuclear and integrated H_alpha
emission line strengths is large.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJS (scheduled for Vol.127, 2000 March);
63 pages, LateX, 9 figures and 6 tables included, a spectrophotometric atlas
is provided as GIF images, fig 1 as a JPEG image, in a single tar-file; a
full 600 dpi version is available at http://www.astro.rug.nl/~nfgs
Practices of Historicism in Times of Change: Chaucer, Pope, Barron Field, A. D. Hope and the Idea of the Culture Hero
The article's abstract is no available
Setting UBVRI Photometric Zero-Points Using Sloan Digital Sky Survey ugriz Magnitudes
We discuss the use of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) ugriz point-spread
function (PSF) photometry for setting the zero points of UBVRI CCD images. From
a comparison with the Landolt (1992) standards and our own photometry we find
that there is a fairly abrupt change in B, V, R, & I zero points around g, r, i
~ 14.5, and in the U zero point at u ~ 16. These changes correspond to where
there is significant interpolation due to saturation in the SDSS PSF fluxes.
There also seems to be another, much smaller systematic effect for stars with
g, r > 19.5. The latter effect is consistent with a small Malmquist bias.
Because of the difficulties with PSF fluxes of brighter stars, we recommend
that comparisons of ugriz and UBVRI photometry should only be made for
unsaturated stars with g, r and i in the range 14.5 - 19.5, and u in the range
16 - 19.5. We give a prescription for setting the UBVRI zero points for CCD
images, and general equations for transforming from ugriz to UBVRI.Comment: 13 pages. 6 figures. Accepted for publication in the Astronomical
Journa
A Photometric Technique to Search for Be Stars in Open Clusters
We describe a technique to identify Be stars in open clusters using Stromgren
b, y, and narrow-band Halpha photometry. We first identify the B-type stars of
the cluster using a theoretical isochrone fit to the (b-y, y) color-magnitude
diagram. The strongest Be stars are easily identified in a (b-y, y-Halpha)
color-color diagram, but those with weaker Halpha emission (classified as
possible Be star detections) may be confused with evolved or foreground stars.
Here we present such photometry plus Halpha spectroscopy of members of the
cluster NGC 3766 to demonstrate the accuracy of our technique. Statistical
results on the relative numbers of Be and B-type stars in additional clusters
will be presented in a future paper.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. Accepted by Ap
Including Systematic Uncertainties in Confidence Interval Construction for Poisson Statistics
One way to incorporate systematic uncertainties into the calculation of
confidence intervals is by integrating over probability density functions
parametrizing the uncertainties. In this note we present a development of this
method which takes into account uncertainties in the prediction of background
processes, uncertainties in the signal detection efficiency and background
efficiency and allows for a correlation between the signal and background
detection efficiencies. We implement this method with the Feldman & Cousins
unified approach with and without conditioning. We present studies of coverage
for the Feldman & Cousins and Neyman ordering schemes. In particular, we
present two different types of coverage tests for the case where systematic
uncertainties are included. To illustrate the method we show the relative
effect of including systematic uncertainties the case of dark matter search as
performed by modern neutrino tel escopes.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, replaced to match published versio
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