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#21
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Southworth Det Eclips Binary Catalog
On Tuesday, January 21, 2014 3:42:50 PM UTC-5, wrote:
[Mod. note: stuff. Misattributed quote deleted, reformatted -- mjh ------------------------------------------------------------- This is my second attempt to respond to your post. The first was perhaps too sarcastic, especially regarding your "help". I am surprised by the persistent efforts to deny the validity of the sample I have chosen as a first test of the preferred total masses of stellar systems hypothesis. I cannot see any scientific reason to discount this sample, but look forward to the time that it will be one of several test samples - making such arguments moot. Having followed developments in physics/astrophysics for decades, my distinct impression is that the nature of the gauntlet that a theory or idea must run is dependent on who the authors are and whether or not the new theory or idea fits in well with the prevailing paradigms. I am troubled by the non-answers to my questions (3) and (4). You say the computer deleted your tests, but would you forget the approximate sigma values? Saying you have done tests and know the answers but the results have disappeared would not hold up in a court of law or science. The non-answer to (4) is most troubling. Firstly you say again that the data is "not at hand" and then you introduce the red herring of the general stellar mass function (which is not really germane to the issue). I claim that there is no more evidence for your assumption of no preferred stellar masses than there is for my hypothesis of preferred stellar masses. If you think I am wrong let's have an unbiased person use Southworth's 2012-present data to test the two hypotheses head-to-head, and report the full results. Your pejorative comments about "quashed your research" are also troubling. My comment on the "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" was completely general comment and did not exclusively referred to my research. I welcome and appreciate any and all help in my research so long as it is not directed at arriving at preconceived conclusions. Robert L. Oldershaw Discrete Scale Relativity |
#22
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Southworth Det Eclips Binary Catalog
In article , "Robert L.
Oldershaw" writes: I am surprised by the persistent efforts to deny the validity of the sample I have chosen as a first test of the preferred total masses of stellar systems hypothesis. It is not a "first test". You have been playing with this for 30 years and said yourself that you chose this data set because it looks promising. Rule #1: first choose the data set then test for significance, not vice versa. I cannot see any scientific reason to discount this sample, There is no reason to discount the sample per se, but there is reason to criticize the fact that you picked it because it looked good to you. but look forward to the time that it will be one of several test samples - making such arguments moot. There already are many such samples. |
#23
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Southworth Det Eclips Binary Catalog
On Saturday, January 25, 2014 3:24:28 AM UTC-5, wlandsman wrote:
Robert, Let us know when you have a 2-sigma detection. Craig's conclusion from his statistical analysis was " my "results" are consistent with the measurements being a 50-50 random occurrence. This is not a viable scientific result." Perhaps somewhere else in this long thread, there is evidence presented for a 2 sigma detection, but I haven't been able to find it. ------------------------------------------------------ In CM's post of 1/9/14 you will find the following unsupported verbal comment. "The end result was that in *no* case was there an individual excess power present with better than 2 sigma significance." I have asked CM to provide the exact chi-squared and sigma values, but he said he deleted them right after doing the tests. From memory he should know if, and by how much, the highest sigma value compared with 2.0-sigma. The tests I have recommended involving the 18/3 disparity surely involve significance at the 2-sigma level, and I have explicitly stated that I think CM's assumed alternative hypothesis does far worse on this particular test. I am not claiming convincing evidence for my hypothesis, but only that it deserves recognition as a valid hypothesis that can and will be tested more thoroughly in the future. RLO |
#24
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Southworth Det Eclips Binary Catalog
On Saturday, January 25, 2014 3:26:53 AM UTC-5, Robert L. Oldershaw wrote:
On Tuesday, January 21, 2014 3:42:50 PM UTC-5, wrote: I am surprised by the persistent efforts to deny the validity of the sample I have chosen as a first test of the preferred total masses of stellar systems hypothesis. I cannot see any scientific reason to discount this sample, ... Astronomers are routinely expected to justify their sample selection criteria. What "objective" reason guides your selection? A selection that looks good to you is not an objective reason. Having followed developments in physics/astrophysics for decades, my distinct impression is that the nature of the gauntlet that a theory or idea must run is dependent on who the authors are and whether or not the new theory or idea fits in well with the prevailing paradigms. Regardless of whether that is true, observational tests of a theory should routinely be able to justify its assumptions and statistical basis and account for statistical biases like number of trials. I am troubled by the non-answers to my questions (3) and (4). You say the computer deleted your tests, but would you forget the approximate sigma values? What I said what that I was working at an interactive session (= command line) with results stored in memory. When I rebooted the computer that memory was not preserved. (I wouldn't say it was deleted.) I recall that one of the ten statistical tests had a single trial significance of 0.047, and after accounting for ten trials this would be a significance of 0.47 or 47% chance of rejecting the null hypothesis. That is a not a credible statistical detection. ... [Y]ou introduce the red herring of the general stellar mass function (which is not really germane to the issue). Your originally proposed hypothesis, "there are no preferred masses," which is not a quantifiable hypothesis because "preferred" is a subjective term by itself. Did you mean that "masses are not quantized at multiples of 0.145 Msun?" Did you mean "masses are not quantized multiples of any mass?" Did you mean "any mass has an equal probability of occurring?" Because of your ambiguity, I picked an example to demonstrate a point: nature does prefer certain lower masses more than higher masses. Statistical tests are routinely expected to put forth a well defined, quantifiable null hypothesis. ... If you think I am wrong let's have an unbiased person use Southworth's 2012-present data to test the two hypotheses head-to-head, and report the full results. Several other people besides myself in this thread have attempted other statistical tests, and none of them has produced a significant result. These are impartial methods and tests that were applied, in the sense that we didn't come with a preconceived notion. How would a new "unbiased" person help? An unbiased person working with a sample that you yourself admitted was biased to your personal preferences (a sample you "liked") will not produce an unbiased result. I say again, we're expecting a basic level of statistical robustness because that's what we expect from any observational test of a new theory. There's no reason to give you a special exemption from this expectation. CM |
#25
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Southworth Det Eclips Binary Catalog
[Mod. note: apologies for delay in posting this and other articles.
Your moderator's day job has been demanding his attention more than usual -- mjh] On Tuesday, January 28, 2014 3:49:31 AM UTC-5, wrote: On Saturday, January 25, 2014 3:26:53 AM UTC-5, Robert L. Oldershaw wrote: On Tuesday, January 21, 2014 3:42:50 PM UTC-5, wrote: I am surprised by the persistent efforts to deny the validity of the sample I have chosen as a first test of the preferred total masses of stellar systems hypothesis. I cannot see any scientific reason to discount this sample, ... Astronomers are routinely expected to justify their sample selection criteria. What "objective" reason guides your selection? A selection that looks good to you is not an objective reason. ------------------------------------------------------------ I only have time this morning to answer this first issue. A more detailed response should be forthcoming. Perhaps my choice of words was too cavilier and vulnerable to attack. I learned about Southworth's binaries catalog from another paper posted to arxiv.org that said good things about the catalog. Southworth has probably never heard about DSR so he is not biased. The catalog is not fossilized but grows. He is careful to only allow mass estimates with relatively narrow error bars. Before I even looked at the catalog, I thought that the 2012-present data would be a good test of the preferred masses hypothesis. I choose to only use 2012-present data because I sincerely believe that our accuracy in the very difficult estimates of stellar masses is improving with time. This is a basic principle of science. I cannot understand why you have such a problem with this sine qua non assumption of science. Do you think accuracy gets worse? If so then science is a fool's game. You may not like the sample I chose for your own private reasons, but it is a good sample that was chosen objectively and will become increasingly diagnostic with time. Even if there was some bias in my choice, and I formally declare that there was NOT ANY BIAS, the fact that the catalog "grows" in size with new data, would eventually erase any problem with the objectivity and scientific value of the evolving sample. Can we drop this issue? |
#26
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Southworth Det Eclips Binary Catalog
On Tuesday, January 28, 2014 3:49:31 AM UTC-5, wrote:
Here are the rest of my additional responses to your 1/28 posting. (1) I have already posted (and reposted!) a response to your comments about my choice of sample and possible bias. I will keep reposting this important response until your misunderstanding of the sample situation has been corrected. (2) Now you say sigma values are 0.047 to 0.47. Then what were you talking about when you said: "The end result was that in *no* case was there an individual excess power present with better than 2 sigma significance." Why mention 2-sigma if the tests never came close to that? I really do not know what to think about the disparity of numbers being bandied about. It seems a bit inconsistent. That is why I think we need testing by people who are not emotionally involved to a high degree. [Mod. note: as you generally claim someone is emotionally involved whenever they find a result that disagrees with your preconceptions, it's hard to see how that can be done to your satisfaction. Any suggestions? -- mjh] (3) Here is the hypothesis, as it was and evermore will be, please write it down for future reference. DSR predicts that the estimated total masses for binary stars will cluster around discrete multiples of 0.145 solar mass. There will be peaks at the predicted multiples and deep valleys at about M +/- 0.07 solar mass. The narrowness of the peaks will depend on the accuracy of the estimates. [Mod. note: this hypothesis is ruled out at extremely high confidence level by observation, as discussed at great length over the past few months. I am tempted to say that this discussion should end here unless anyone has anything new to add -- mjh] (4) I am looking for help from people with the following qualities. (A) Good statistical skills. (B) No positive or negative bias in this specific matter or towards DSR in general. (C) Someone who will candidly report the most positive results as well as the most negative, so we get a more comprehensive feeling for the overall situation. RLO Discrete Scale Relativity |
#27
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Southworth Det Eclips Binary Catalog
On Friday, January 31, 2014 4:22:57 PM UTC-5, Robert L. Oldershaw wrote:
I choose to only use 2012-present data because I sincerely believe that our accuracy in the very difficult estimates of stellar masses is improving with time. It is *not* difficult to estimate stellar masses from eclipsing binaries -- in fact, there can hardly be a more straightforward astrophysical measurement. One applies Kepler's law to the radial velocity curves, and uses the light curve through eclipse to compute any small correction from a 90 degree inclination. Compared to exoplanet studies (which have been around for almost 20 years now) the radial velocity amplitudes in eclipsing binaries are enormous (by the ratio of a stellar mass to a planetary mass). The difficult aspect of eclipsing binary studies is *finding* these rare stellar systems. As we enter the age of large-scale synoptic surveys, many newer and fainter systems are being discovered. For example, the 2013 data in the Southworth catalog includes 14 stars from the OGLE survey of the Magellanic Clouds. But it is perverse to include this data but reject the ~10 magnitude brighter classical eclpsing binaries just because there hasn't been any publicaton about them in the past 3 years. Suppose we were considering masses within our Solar System: most of the recent publications would be about newly discovered outer Kuiper Belt objects, but that would not negate the accuracy of mass determinations for the inner planets and asteroids. Robert had it right in the very first sentence of this thread: "[The Southworth catalog is] "a very good catalog of detached eclipsing binary stars with mass determinations "accurate to 2%"." There are 161 stars in this catalog -- why not use them? |
#28
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Southworth Det Eclips Binary Catalog
On Friday, January 31, 2014 4:22:57 PM UTC-5, Robert L. Oldershaw wrote:
I choose to only use 2012-present data because I sincerely believe that our accuracy in the very difficult estimates of stellar masses is improving with time. This is a basic principle of science. I cannot understand why you have such a problem with this sine qua non assumption of science. ... That's not necessarily a valid assumption for newly discovered systems (e.g. see Wayne Landsman's excellent post). If you are interested in increased accuracy, then why not select those with smallest error bars? The more recently reported sample measurements are *not* necessarily the most accurate. On Friday, January 31, 2014 4:27:58 PM UTC-5, Robert L. Oldershaw wrote: On Tuesday, January 28, 2014 3:49:31 AM UTC-5, wrote: (2) Now you say sigma values are 0.047 to 0.47. Then what were you talking about when you said: "The end result was that in *no* case was there an individual excess power present with better than 2 sigma significance." Why mention 2-sigma if the tests never came close to that? I really do not know what to think about the disparity of numbers being bandied about. It seems a bit inconsistent. ... A 2 sigma event occurs by chance approximately 1 in 20 times or 5% chance of occurrence. But if I sample times, I have a 10 x 5% = 50% chance of seeing a single such event. When I look at more than one sample, I increase the chances of seeing a rare object just by chance. I must account for this. This is accounting for number of trials. The best *significance* probability value I reported for a single chi-square trial of 0.047 = 4.7%, is approximately equivalent to 2 sigma for a single trial[*]. However, I did ten different sample trials, so the final significance is 0.047 x 10 = 0.47 = 47% probability of occurring by random chance. This is not significant. I mentioned this in my original post: I saw a 2-sigma value in a single trial (~5% significance) but must reduce the significance because of number of trials. Again, I ask, why don't you take responsibility for understanding the statistics? CM [*] - in the physical sciences we often readily interchange between probability and "sigma". 0 sigma is 50%/50% significance; 1 sigma is ~31%; 2 sigma is ~5%; 3 sigma is ~0.3%; 4 sigma is ~0.006%; 5 sigma is ~0.00006%; etc. The "confidence" is 100% - (significance). [Mod. note: I'm posting this as it was plausibly sent before I closed the thread, but followups should be sent directly to the poster. Further postings in this thread will not be accepted. -- mjh] |
#29
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Southworth Det Eclips Binary Catalog
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