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  #1  
Old August 29th 16, 09:48 PM posted to sci.astro.research
Robert L. Oldershaw
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Posts: 617
Default Statistics Problem/Question

I am not looking for an exact answer for the following question, but
rather for an approximate answer.

Say you had 30 low-mass red dwarfs (unbiased sample) whose masses are
all measured to +/- 0.01 solar mass. Say you added all 30 masses and
divided by 0.145 solar mass.

What would the approximate (or exact if you prefer) probability be for
find ing an exact multiple? What would be the expected probability for a
deviation of +/- 0.001 solar mass, and finally what would be the
expected probability for a deviation of +/- 0.01 solar mass?

What I am looking for is a better feeling for whether it makes sense to
do such a test and whether a result that comes from such a test might be
meaningful or misleading.=20

First, second, third, fourth, ... opinions are most welcome.

  #2  
Old August 31st 16, 09:52 PM posted to sci.astro.research
Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)[_2_]
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Posts: 273
Default Statistics Problem/Question

In article ,
"Robert L. Oldershaw" writes:

Say you had 30 low-mass red dwarfs (unbiased sample) whose masses are
all measured to +/- 0.01 solar mass. Say you added all 30 masses and
divided by 0.145 solar mass.

What would the approximate (or exact if you prefer) probability be for
finding an exact multiple?


The probability for finding an EXACT multiple is zero.

What would be the expected probability for a
deviation of +/- 0.001 solar mass,


This doesn't make any sense if, as stated above, the "masses are all
measured to +/- 0.01 solar mass".

and finally what would be the
expected probability for a deviation of +/- 0.01 solar mass?


Presumably, you want to test whether the null hypothesis that the masses
are "random" can be ruled out, and whether there is some evidence for
0.145 being some sort of preferred value.

The number 30 doesn't matter. The sum of any number of "random" numbers
is itself "random".
The probability that the sum deviates from an integer multiple of 0.145
by less than 0.0725 is 100%, and the probability that it deviates by
more is 0. This is because 0.0725=0.145/2 is the maximum possible
deviation.

If the masses are measured to 0.01 solar masses, then you can forget
about detecting any smaller deviations.

It doesn't make sense to talk about "a deviation of +/- 0.01 solar
mass", since this probability is 0. What you might mean is the
probability that the deviation is less than 0.01. That would be roughly
14% (0.01/0.0725).

Suppose you know the masses to 0.001 instead of 0.01. Then the
probability of the deviation being less than 0.001 is about 1.4%. If
you actually found this, it would be considered marginal evidence in
favour of ruling out the null hypothesis.

A more detailed analysis would also put an error bar on the sum (add the
individual errors quadratically).
  #3  
Old September 1st 16, 10:59 PM posted to sci.astro.research
Robert L. Oldershaw
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Posts: 617
Default Statistics Problem/Question

On Wednesday, August 31, 2016 at 4:52:39 PM UTC-4, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:

It doesn't make sense to talk about "a deviation of +/- 0.01 solar
mass", since this probability is 0. What you might mean is the
probability that the deviation is less than 0.01. That would be roughly
14% (0.01/0.0725).

Suppose you know the masses to 0.001 instead of 0.01. Then the
probability of the deviation being less than 0.001 is about 1.4%. If
you actually found this, it would be considered marginal evidence in
favour of ruling out the null hypothesis.

A more detailed analysis would also put an error bar on the sum (add the
individual errors quadratically).


Thanks for the analysis. I tried two samples of 30 stars each and found
a deviation of 0.001 solar mass for the first sample, which had error
bars on the masses that were 0.004 to 0.005 solar mass on average.

The second sample had mass uncertainties that were =/ than 0.01 solar
mass but the average was about closer to 0.01 than 0.005. The deviation
for that sample was 0.008 solar mass.

Personally, I find this mildly encouraging, but I acknowledge that it
will take more accurate stellar masses to fully test my hypothesis.

There must be a better way to search for hidden patterns in noisy data,
but this is obviously not my strong suit.

  #4  
Old September 2nd 16, 01:55 AM posted to sci.astro.research
Phillip Helbig (undress to reply)[_2_]
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Posts: 273
Default Statistics Problem/Question

In article ,
"Robert L. Oldershaw" writes:

Thanks for the analysis. I tried two samples of 30 stars each and found
a deviation of 0.001 solar mass for the first sample, which had error
bars on the masses that were 0.004 to 0.005 solar mass on average.


The error on the total mass will be larger than on the individual
masses, so you can't know the total mass that well. If the deviation is
really 0.001, that is interesting, but since the error on the total mass
is much larger, probably not meaningful.

The second sample had mass uncertainties that were =/ than 0.01 solar
mass but the average was about closer to 0.01 than 0.005. The deviation
for that sample was 0.008 solar mass.


Still, the deviation is less than the error on the total mass.

Personally, I find this mildly encouraging, but I acknowledge that it
will take more accurate stellar masses to fully test my hypothesis.


Much more accurate.

There must be a better way to search for hidden patterns in noisy data,
but this is obviously not my strong suit.


Yes. There is a huge literature on this. (H-I intensity mapping, for
example, deals with a signal-to-noise ratio of much less than 1.)

Before going further in this direction, though, why 30 stars? Why not
25 or 300? Why two samples of 30 each rather than one of 60 each?

If one accepts that something interesting is going on if the probability
of getting the observed results if the null hypothesis is true is less
than 1% or whatever, keep in mind that if you do 100 tests, you should
EXPECT to get a false positive once. So unless it is abundantly clear
that there are objective reasons for 30 stars and so on, it will be hard
to demonstrate that you didn't try various sample sizes and so on until
something looked significant while not talking about the majority of
cases where nothing looked significant. Even if you didn't do this, the
reader has to be able to see that objectively what you are doing is
straightforward. A-posteriori statistics is shaky ground.

The 0.145 has come up here many times. My impression was that even you
were once convinced that there was no signal in the stuff you presented.
So, even if there is some signal now, the question arises in how many
places you looked until you found something. Again, even if this is not
what happened, the reader has to be convinced that the signal is really
unexpected and not just the expected fluke which one will always see if
one looks long enough.
  #5  
Old September 7th 16, 07:20 AM posted to sci.astro.research
Robert L. Oldershaw
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Posts: 617
Default Statistics Problem/Question

On Thursday, September 1, 2016 at 8:55:44 PM UTC-4, Phillip Helbig (undress=
to reply) wrote:

Before going further in this direction, though, why 30 stars? Why not
25 or 300? Why two samples of 30 each rather than one of 60 each?

If one accepts that something interesting is going on if the probability
of getting the observed results if the null hypothesis is true is less
than 1% or whatever, keep in mind that if you do 100 tests, you should
EXPECT to get a false positive once. So unless it is abundantly clear
that there are objective reasons for 30 stars and so on, it will be hard
to demonstrate that you didn't try various sample sizes and so on until
something looked significant while not talking about the majority of
cases where nothing looked significant. Even if you didn't do this, the
reader has to be able to see that objectively what you are doing is
straightforward. A-posteriori statistics is shaky ground.

The 0.145 has come up here many times. M

The second sample had mass uncertainties that were =/ than 0.01 solar
mass but the average was about closer to 0.01 than 0.005. The deviation
for that sample was 0.008 solar mass.


Still, the deviation is less than the error on the total mass.

Personaly impression was that even you
were once convinced that there was no signal in the stuff you presented.
So, even if there is some signal now, the question arises in how many
places you looked until you found something. Again, even if this is not
what happened, the reader has to be convinced that the signal is really
unexpected and not just the expected fluke which one will always see if
one looks long enough.

-------------------

Well, I suppose an answer is warranted.

Firstly, you are badly mistaken if you intuit that I have given up on
the hypothesis. I am more aware of how hard it will be to convince
anyone of a positive result since it conflicts so radically with current
wisdom. I think it will take the proverbial "extraordinary evidence"
that cannot be hand-waved away or ignored. I readily admit that the
hypothesis is extraordinarily hard to test at present, given the
available data. However, the mass estimates will continue to get better
with time.

The first sample came from this recently posted paper:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1608.04775 . I did not go looking for some sample
that fit my hypothesis, and I find the implication that I would do so
more than a bit unfair.

The second sample was just the bottom 30 stars in the Southworth's
detached binary stars sample that I have discussed before. I chose the
bottom 30 so as to emphasize low-mass stars, and I restricted the sample
to stars with masses estimated to +/- 0.01 solar mass.

It never hurts to keep an open mind on open questions.

Robert L. Oldershaw
http://www3.amherst.edu/~rloldershaw

  #6  
Old September 9th 16, 11:54 PM posted to sci.astro.research
Steve Willner
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Posts: 1,172
Default Statistics Problem/Question

In article ,
"Robert L. Oldershaw" writes:
Say you had 30 low-mass red dwarfs (unbiased sample) whose masses are
all measured to +/- 0.01 solar mass. Say you added all 30 masses


The uncertainty in the sum would be 0.01 * sqrt(30).

I don't understand the rest of the question, but...

and divided by 0.145 solar mass.


If you are testing some hypothesis that the masses are quantized, I
don't see why you would add the masses. You'd want to find out
whether the individual masses predominantly fall close to the value
you hypothesize or not.

The sensitivity of the test depends on, among other things, how
precisely you state your hypothesis. It's a lot easier to test
"within 0.00001 of 0.14500" than "near some fixed but unknown value
between 0.10 and 0.20". (Uncertainty in the hypothesis is a separate
issue from uncertainty in the observations.)

As a quick estimate, if your hypothesis also has an uncertainty of
0.01 Msun, I think you'd need about 100 stars to make a first
test. (That only applies of you don't "tune" your hypothesis to the
actual data. If you do, you'd need several times more stars.) You
don't need fancy statistics; just plot up the mass differences from
your hypothesized value and see whether they fall near zero more
often than a random distribution.

But a I say, I don't understand the question, so maybe you are after
something entirely different.

--
Help keep our newsgroup healthy; please don't feed the trolls.
Steve Willner Phone 617-495-7123
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

 




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