SIEminar: Statistical Acrobatics with R, by S. Comeron, on May 6th
R is one of the software packages with the shortest name, but with the
largest array of capabilities. It is a language and environment for
statistical computing and graphics, and provides a wide variety of
statistical (linear and nonlinear modelling, classical statistical tests,
time-series analysis, classification, clustering, ...) and graphical
techniques. One of R's strengths is the ease with which well-designed
publication-quality plots can be produced, including mathematical symbols
and formulae where needed. In this talk, Sebastien will give a short
introduction to R, and will show us how his own research has benefitted
from it.
"Introduction to Python for Astronomers"
course - lessons learned
Last month we gave a one-week introductory course to the Python programming
language for astronomers. It was a participation success, as about thirty
people registered and attended, so that we had to move to the Aula instead
of using a meeting room as initially planned. About half of the participants
also sent us their opinions and suggestions through the
course's survey:
we learned that the course was a little bit too intensive (though this is
normal for a general-purpouse language), that it is preferable to
dilute (for instance a class every other day), and that we should
also assign some homework; the overall evaluation of the course in
general was very good. If you missed it, there are webcasts
available, see the links in the
SIEpedia;
if you cannot wait to try Python, check out this
HOWTO guide.
"Advances in Computational Astrophysics"
special issue of CISE Journal
Only a quick note to inform you that the latest (March 2009) issue of the
Computing in Science and Engineering Journal is dedicated to astrophysics.
At the IAC we are subscribed both to the paper and to the on-line versions
of the journal, so you can check the articles from the comfort of your
armchair by pointing your browser at
https://aip.scitation.org/journal/csx/
Share your code with the IAC community!
As you probably know, several applications have been developed here at the
IAC and made available to the worldwide astronomical community, for
instance
IAC-STAR, or the IRAF
package
LIRISDR
(for the complete list, see
http://www.iac.es/servicios.php?op1=32&op2=78&lang=en).
If you have developed any code or tool that you think can be of interest to
other researchers, we encourage you to add it to the above Web page: get
in touch with to discuss
the details. If however you prefer to limit the visibility of your code or
tool to within the IAC, please write to and we'll look into the best way
to publish it in the IAC intranet or in an IAC-only area of the SIE Web
site.
Astronomical Software Wants To Be Free
Many public astronomical software packages written by lone astronomers or
small teams, such as DAOPHOT, SExtractor and GALFIT, have enabled easily
as much science as a large telescope would have, but at a fraction of the
cost. Unfortunately, software development is not seen as "doing
science", and has much less recognition and appreciation in the
astronomical community than it does deserve. Two white papers submitted to
the
Astro2010: The Astronomy and Astrophysics Decadal Survey
address many important issues about Astronomical Software:
Astronomical Data Reduction and Analysis for the Next
Decade and
Astronomical Software Wants To Be Free: A Manifesto, and
make for a very interesting read.
P.S. The above US Decadal Survey website also contains more than three
hundred
Science White Papers about practically every topic in
Astronomy.
New burro machine available
As you probably know, at the IAC we have a number of "burro"s
(workstations with high-speed CPUs and "plenty" of RAM) available.
These are all freely accessible, and with the addition of
dardo,
we now have four different options with the following characteristics:
- dardo: Remote free access, 2 AMD quad-core (64 bits)
processors (8 cores @ 2.4GHz), 64GB RAM, 450GB HD
- rucio: Remote free access, 2 AMD dual-core (64 bits)
processors (4 cores @ 2GHz), 16GB RAM, 120GB HD
- esel: User room, free access, 2 Intel Xeon (32 bits)
processors (2 cores @ 3.2GHz), 4GB RAM,450GB HD