2 research outputs found
A statistical investigation into the properties and dynamics of biological populations experiencing environmental variability
Student Number : 9908888R -
MSc research report -
School of Statistics and Actuarial Science -
Faculty of ScienceMuch research has been devoted towards the understanding of population behaviour.
Such understanding has often been furthered through the development of theoretical
population models. This research report explores a variety of population models and
their implications.
The implications of the various models are explored using both analytical results and
simulations. Specific aspects of population behaviour studied include gross fluctuation
characteristics and extinction probabilities for a population.
This research report starts with an overview of Deterministic Models. This is followed
by a study of Birth and Death Processes, Branching Processes and Models that
incorporate environmental variability. Finally, we study the maximum likelihood
approach to population parameter estimation. The more notable theoretical results
derived include: the development of models that incorporate the population’s history;
models that incorporate discontinuous environmental changes and the development of
a means of parameter estimation for a Stochastic Differential Equation
Results from the Supernova Photometric Classification Challenge
We report results from the Supernova Photometric Classification Challenge
(SNPCC), a publicly released mix of simulated supernovae (SNe), with types (Ia,
Ibc, and II) selected in proportion to their expected rate. The simulation was
realized in the griz filters of the Dark Energy Survey (DES) with realistic
observing conditions (sky noise, point-spread function and atmospheric
transparency) based on years of recorded conditions at the DES site.
Simulations of non-Ia type SNe are based on spectroscopically confirmed light
curves that include unpublished non-Ia samples donated from the Carnegie
Supernova Project (CSP), the Supernova Legacy Survey (SNLS), and the Sloan
Digital Sky Survey-II (SDSS-II). A spectroscopically confirmed subset was
provided for training. We challenged scientists to run their classification
algorithms and report a type and photo-z for each SN. Participants from 10
groups contributed 13 entries for the sample that included a host-galaxy
photo-z for each SN, and 9 entries for the sample that had no redshift
information. Several different classification strategies resulted in similar
performance, and for all entries the performance was significantly better for
the training subset than for the unconfirmed sample. For the spectroscopically
unconfirmed subset, the entry with the highest average figure of merit for
classifying SNe~Ia has an efficiency of 0.96 and an SN~Ia purity of 0.79. As a
public resource for the future development of photometric SN classification and
photo-z estimators, we have released updated simulations with improvements
based on our experience from the SNPCC, added samples corresponding to the
Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) and the SDSS, and provided the answer
keys so that developers can evaluate their own analysis.Comment: accepted by PAS