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(need to get slides)
Will cover topics discovered during Ampel development cycle and what we considered doing.
Until now reproducibility unnecessary in astronomy due to instrument growth but after LSST not sure if that will still be case.
Most alerts are faint and hence junk
Reusable software has not been a priority in science, particularly due to PhD cycle, but with projects running for 10+ years this can no longer be the case.
Reproducibility hard to do due to the black box (isolated) nature of the various steps in studies/pipelines.
Users create an analysis schema that runs across the four different information tiers in Ampel.
Users prefer a UI but the Ampel approach is analysis(code) focussed
Q Roy to Julien - How good are your classifications? How many false +ve/-ve?
Julien answer - difficult question to anwser, using TNS since Nov 2020 about 300 candidates have been reported. Half of these were spectroscopically followed-up. More than 80% of these were true SNs. This is a good result but this not the only thing to look at. Now trying to make reliable detection faster. Currently have to wait 7 days but would prefer 3 days
.Jakob asked Dave - Sherlock is very nice, but how do people see maintaining and updating software over next 15 years.
Dave noted default algorithm now sits with code (individual users can adjust, but default is version controlled). When you run Sherlock, the version of the classifier is stored for reproducability.
Jakob asked whether Dave would be about to update it
Dave hoped so, but believed someone could be trained up to manage it in around two weeks, though noting code documentation needs to be improved.
Dave asked Julein if Fink classifdier is based on light curve data alone.
Yes, for Type 1a Supernovae.
Dave concerned that Type 1a SNe cannot be classified with just two or three data points
Julien agrees, but believes representative training set can help.
In chat, Q to Ken from AndyL, “if Cassandra is widely used in industry, how come we don’t know how to use it? Is it because in Industry its used internally, not by independent users?”
Andy asked Ken about Cassandra and noted concern that not sure how users will interface with Cassandra. Can we learn from Facebook use?
Matter of choice of technology, and past experience of relational databases. Use of Cassandra has been learned from scratch.. Facebook, etc. also use MySQL, etc. Ken has been sampling community use of databases, to see how well supported Cassandra might be. Cassandra just means outsdie of database. Could be file system, or something else.
Andy believes need to consider user requirements in more detail. jKen Ken asked whether Dave had a sense of how many obkects objects could classify per second
Dave noted recent speed tests, which achieved ~10k per second.
In zoom chat Q Eric to all : “most of the examples we’re discussing here are the explosive transients. Is that reflecting the actual or desired user communities of Lasair, FINK, Ampel? What are the ambitions ( or not) to support variables/AGN/solar system science?”
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