The Informatics and Statistics Science Collaboration (ISSC) has the goal of using their expertise to provide general help with statistics to all members of the Rubin community. They have been welcoming questions of all levels in their moderated LSSTC Slack channel #issc-ask-the-issc, and would like to extend this activity to the Community Forum. Our proposal is for a new category under “Science”, like the “Data Q&A” category, called “Statistics Q&A”. We would also like to link this new category to the #issc-ask-the-issc LSSTC Slack channel, similar to how the “Data Q&A” category is linked to #dm-support, so that all new topics in “Statistics Q&A” appear in #issc-ask-the-issc. Below, we have put a draft description of the new category that would serve as it’s first topic, similar to this first topic in “Data Q&A”. Feedback on this idea is solicited.
Draft Description of a new “Statistics Q&A” Category in “Science”:
The Informatics and Statistics Science Collaboration (ISSC) encourages statistics-related questions on all topics related to astronomical data analysis, from beginners to experts. Everyone should feel welcome to respond to postings and discuss topics. This category will be moderated by volunteers from the ISSC who are eager to share their expertise with the Rubin science community. New topics in this category will also appear in the LSSTC Slack channel #issc-ask-the-issc, and might be casually discussed there as well, but it is preferable to have most of the discussion occur in this Community Forum where it will remain openly available.
In this category, please start a new topic for each unique question. Use a succinct title containing representative keywords, and then describe your question. When necessary, feel free to upload plots or provide links to external material. If discussions evolve into different issues, start a new thread. This will ensure that the information we generate will be searchable and easily accessible to all.
(And then here at the bottom, put the same “New to community.lsst.org” set of information as in this first topic in “Data Q&A”.)