Astronomical research often involves imaging, photometric and spectroscopy surveys of the sky producing terabyte to petabyte databases and billion-object catalogs. While the scientific promise is tremendous, achieving the goals depends critically on extraction of useful knowledge using statistical inference, and especially the use of advanced statistical methods. Due to the structure of undergraduate and graduate curricula, U.S. astronomers are not well trained in statistics, and most of them learn elementary methods through books written by and for physical scientists. Advanced methods are badly underutilized: statistics is an available technology that should be tapped to advance the needs of astronomy and astrophysics.
The 2009 Summer School for young astronomers in statistical inference at an intermediate level helps to alleviate this educational gap, continuing the intensive week-long Summer Schools in Statistics for Astronomers, initiated in 2005 by the group at Pennsylvania State. The school gives a broad exposure to fundamental concepts and a wide range of resulting methods across many fields of statistics. Experienced statistics professors will teach an innovative curriculum, accompanied by software tutorials with applications to astronomical datasets. This will have a substantial impact on the training of many young researchers.
