While I’m busy packing my life into boxes, here’s an xkcd to make you smile.
Topcat, Top Dog
September 22, 2010 By
Astrobetter has a guest post by Niall “in the gutter” Deacon of the University of Hawaii on one of my favourite pieces of astronomical software, Topcat. Developed as part of the UK’s Virtual Observatory program Astrogrid, Topcat gives astronomers Tools for Operations on Catalogues and Tables. That doesn’t sound very sexy, but for anyone who deals with data from large public surveys or needs to cross-match several large datasets, Topcat is the grease in the cogs of their productivity.
Niall recorded a cool screencast to show off some of Topcat’s functionality, which I’ve embedded above. There’s also some useful discussion in the comments on Astrobetter, including one from Mark Taylor who actually wrote Topcat.
I use Topcat almost exclusively in conjunction with image viewer Aladin. Connecting the two via the SAMP protocol, which is done at the click of a button, allows you to send targets back and forth between the two, visualise catalog data or create tables from image data. Recent versions of DS9 are also VO-enabled, though I find the VO functionality of Aladin, i.e. searching catalogs, images and archives, more efficient and versatile.
No More Dr Nice Guy
September 18, 2010 By
Britain is in the throes of massive cuts in public spending. Science isn’t escaping the axe, and with budgets already squeezed in recent years this is likely to lead to excellent scientific research losing its funding.
At a time when many other countries are upping their investment in scientific research to stimulate economic growth, the UK’s move could well be an own goal that will stifle the country’s potential for innovation in years to come. A rather basic error in a speech by business secretary Vince Cable about the country’s research spending did little to instill confidence in the government amongst the scientific community.
A number of concerned and angry scientists have set up the Science is Vital campaign and are organising a rally in London on 9 October under the motto “No more Dr Nice Guy” – a fab slogan. So if you are a working British scientist or you just care about science in Britain, sign up for the campaign. The Facebook group is here with over 1600 members already, the twitter hashtag is #scienceisvital, some more useful links are here, and if you want to be more actively involved, this tweet may be of interest.
I won’t be in the UK at the time so will have to miss the event, but I’ll be cheering from across the Channel.
In which I get Celebrated in The Guardian
September 17, 2010 By
Amidst the perennial discussion of how to get more women into scientific careers and keep them there, it hadn’t occurred to me that female science bloggers may also be in a minority.
A few days ago, Jenny Rohn posted a graph on her blog, showing the male to female ratio of several science blog networks: the well-established Discover and relative newcomers The Guardian, Wired and PLoS. She didn’t actually make any statement about gender balance or proportionality of representation – that was me – but an interesting discussion followed in the comments. Self-proclaimed “armchair activist” Martin Robbins started a hashtag, kickstarted the hive overmind, and collated a list of women science bloggers over at his new perch in The Guardian.
So that’s how my name ended up in my favourite newspaper. Hurrah.
It’s a really nice initiative to get more attention to us women who write about science. Female role models have been cited as an important factor in getting and keeping more women in science careers, and in that respect increasing the visibility of working female scientists is a great idea.
And yet, and yet. I don’t think singling women out is particularly constructive way to approach a gender balance issue – a gender balance issue that, in this case, we don’t even know for sure exists.
Scientific hubris, or: Everything you thought you knew about straight line fits is wrong
September 13, 2010 By
Think you’ve got your least squares down to a tee? Think again.
In a paper posted to the Arxiv in late August, David Hogg of NYU and his collaborators take us to task on our sloppy data fitting habits. And he’s not in the mood to mince his words.
It is conventional to begin any scientific document with an introduction that explains why the subject matter is important. Let us break with tradition and observe that in almost all cases in which scientists fit a straight line to their data, they are doing something that is simultaneously wrong and unnecessary.
Hear that? Next time you fit a straight line to your data, consider that you’re probably wasting your time. Stop pandering to style to get a “catchy punchline and compact, approximate representations”.
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