Muir, J;
Bernstein, GM;
Huterer, D;
Elsner, F;
Krause, E;
Roodman, A;
Allam, S;
... Zuntz, J; + view all
(2020)
Blinding multiprobe cosmological experiments.
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
, 494
(3)
pp. 4454-4470.
10.1093/mnras/staa965.
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Abstract
The goal of blinding is to hide an experiment’s critical results – here the inferred cosmological parameters – until all decisions affecting its analysis have been finalized. This is especially important in the current era of precision cosmology, when the results of any new experiment are closely scrutinized for consistency or tension with previous results. In analyses that combine multiple observational probes, like the combination of galaxy clustering and weak lensing in the Dark Energy Survey (DES), it is challenging to blind the results while retaining the ability to check for (in)consistency between different parts of the data. We propose a simple new blinding transformation, which works by modifying the summary statistics that are input to parameter estimation, such as two-point correlation functions. The transformation shifts the measured statistics to new values that are consistent with (blindly) shifted cosmological parameters while preserving internal (in)consistency. We apply the blinding transformation to simulated data for the projected DES Year 3 galaxy clustering and weak lensing analysis, demonstrating that practical blinding is achieved without significant perturbation of internal-consistency checks, as measured here by degradation of the χ2 between the data and best-fitting model. Our blinding method’s performance is expected to improve as experiments evolve to higher precision and accuracy.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Blinding multiprobe cosmological experiments |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1093/mnras/staa965 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa965 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the version of record. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | methods: data analysis, methods: numerical, methods: statistical, cosmology: observations; large-scale structure of Universe |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Physics and Astronomy |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10102115 |
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