The rise of astrostatistics

Astrophysicists and cosmologists are turning to statisticians to help them analyze an ever-increasing deluge of data. In late 1801 the orbit of the newly discovered asteroid Ceres carried it behind the sun, and astronomers worried they had lost it forever. A young mathematical prodigy named Carl Friedrich Gauss developed a new statistical technique to find it. Called “least squares regression,” that technique is now a fundamental method of statistical analysis. For about 200 years after that...