This grant will fund an interdisciplinary conference on statistics and astronomy which will be held at The Pennsylvania State University on August 11-14, 1991. In recent years, astronomers have shown considerable interest in using advanced statistical techniques, such as survival analysis, sampling theory and spatial analysis. However, not many statisticians are aware of the problems in astronomy where statistics plays an important role, such as luminosity functions and nondetections, galaxy clustering and image analysis. This conference will bridge the gap between the two communities, exposing researchers and students of the two communities to the common problems of the two fields. The sessions will begin with an invited review talk by an astronomer describing the important data analysis problems in an area. These problems will be discussed by statisticians. Particular data analysis problems and methods of solution will then be addressed in contributed presentations.
