My research talk for CCA promotion

A summary of what I've been up to for the past few years and where my research program is going.

Transcript

1. BUILDING THE SOFTWARE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ASTROPHYSICS by Dan Foreman-Mackey
2. who am I? / / what’ve I been up to? 1
3. 7 [1] solving Hard™ data analysis problems [2] enabling and empowering astrophysicists
4. implementation.
5. data = > physics
6. open source software for astrophysics 2
7. why?
8. credit: Adrian Price-Whelan / / data: SAO/NASA ADS
9. my open source contributions 3
11. gaussian processes 4
12. p(data|physics)
13. data ~ N(model; noise)
14. °0.6 °0.3 0.0 0.3 0.6 raw [ppt] 0 5 10 15 20 25 time [days] °0.30 °0.15 0.00 de-trended [ppt] N = 1000 reference: DFM+ (2017)
15. °0.6 °0.3 0.0 0.3 0.6 raw [ppt] 0 5 10 15 20 25 time [days] °0.30 °0.15 0.00 de-trended [ppt] N = 1000 reference: DFM+ (2017)
16. data ~ N(model; noise)
17. data ~ N(model; noise)
18. so. why not?
19. data ~ N(model; noise)
21. reference: Ambikasaran, DFM+ (2015)
23. reference: Ambikasaran, DFM+ (2015)
24. reference: DFM, Agol, Ambikasaran, Angus (2017); DFM (2018); DFM, Luger, et al. (2021)
26. reference: Gordon, Agol, DFM (2020)
27. what’s next?
31. credit: Quang Tran
32. reference: Luger, DFM, Hedges (2021)
33. probabilistic inference 5
34. p(data|physics)
35. have: physics = > data
36. want: data = > physics
37. integral of the form f(physics) p(physics|data) dphysics
39. number of parameters patience required a few tenish not outrageously many reference: DFM (priv. comm.)
40. number of parameters patience required emcee a few tenish not outrageously many reference: DFM (priv. comm.)
41. number of parameters patience required emcee a few tenish not outrageously many how things should be reference: DFM (priv. comm.)
46. gradients!
47. dp(data|physics) / dphysics
48. automatic differentiation aka “backpropagation”
49. your model is just code
50. apply the chain rule
51. apply the chain rule over and over again . . .
52. sounds silly?
53. it's not! (mostly)
56. what’s next?
58. jax.readthedocs.io
59. my approach to open source 6
61. [1] don’t underestimate users [2] build libraries, not (just) scripts [3] teach by example
65. bringing open source practices to research more generally
70. what’s next? 7
71. 7 [1] inference with stochastic or intractable models [2] what can we do to better support open source in astrophysics
72. 7
73. 7 credit: Adrian Price-Whelan
74. many fundamental software packages have a shockingly small number of maintainers.
75. a selection of some* CCA-supported software: * my apologies for neglecting your favorites!
77. BUILDING THE SOFTWARE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ASTROPHYSICS @ CCA