This comprehensive guide to Bayesian methods in astronomy enables hands-on work by supplying complete R, JAGS, Python, and Stan code, to use directly or to adapt. It begins by examining the normal model from both frequentist and Bayesian perspectives and then progresses to a full range of Bayesian generalized linear and mixed or hierarchical models, as well as additional types of models such as ABC and INLA. The book provides code that is largely unavailable elsewhere and includes details on interpreting and evaluating Bayesian models. Initial discussions offer models in synthetic form so that readers can easily adapt them to their own data; later the models are applied to real astronomical data. The consistent focus is on hands-on modeling, analysis of data, and interpretations that address scientific questions. A must-have for astronomers, its concrete approach will also be attractive to researchers in the sciences more generally.

Provides an overview of the fundamentals of Bayesian inference and its applications within astrophysics, for graduate students and researchers.

Comprehensive introduction to Bayesian methods in cosmological studies, for graduate students and researchers in cosmology, astrophysics and applied statistics.

A hands-on guide to Bayesian models with R, JAGS, Python, and Stan code, for a wide range of astronomical data types.

This book includes the lectures given during the third session of the School of Statistics for Astrophysics that took place at Autrans, near Grenoble, in France, in October 2017. The subject is Bayesian Methodology. The interest of this statistical approach in astrophysics probably comes from its necessity and its success in determining the cosmological parameters from observations, especially from the cosmic background luctuations. The cosmological community has thus been very active in this field for many years. But the Bayesian methodology, complementary to the more classical frequentist one, has many applications in physics in general due to its ability to incorporate a priori knowledge into inference, such as uncertainty brought by the observational processes. The Bayesian approach becomes more and more widespread in the astrophysical literature. This book contains statistics courses on basic to advanced methods with practical exercises using the R environment, by leading experts in their field. This covers the foundations of Bayesian inference, Markov chain Monte Carlo technique, model building, Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) and Bayesian nonparametric inference and clustering.

Bayesian methods are being increasingly employed in many different areas of research in the physical sciences. In astrophysics, models are used to make predictions to be compared to observations. These observations offer information that is incomplete and uncertain, so the comparison has to be pursued by following a probabilistic approach. With contributions from leading experts, this volume covers the foundations of Bayesian inference, a description of computational methods, and recent results from their application to areas such as exoplanet detection and characterisation, image reconstruction, and cosmology. It appeals to both young researchers seeking to learn about Bayesian methods as well as to astronomers wishing to incorporate these approaches in their research areas. It provides the next generation of researchers with the tools of modern data analysis that are already becoming standard in current astrophysical research.

Bayesian inference provides a simple and unified approach to data analysis, allowing experimenters to assign probabilities to competing hypotheses of interest, on the basis of the current state of knowledge. By incorporating relevant prior information, it can sometimes improve model parameter estimates by many orders of magnitude. This book provides a clear exposition of the underlying concepts with many worked examples and problem sets. It also discusses implementation, including an introduction to Markov chain Monte-Carlo integration and linear and nonlinear model fitting. Particularly extensive coverage of spectral analysis (detecting and measuring periodic signals) includes a self-contained introduction to Fourier and discrete Fourier methods. There is a chapter devoted to Bayesian inference with Poisson sampling, and three chapters on frequentist methods help to bridge the gap between the frequentist and Bayesian approaches. Supporting Mathematica® notebooks with solutions to selected problems, additional worked examples, and a Mathematica tutorial are available at www.cambridge.org/9780521150125.