A List of errors and typos in the book Statistics, Data Mining, and Machine Learning in Astronomy
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Errors are listed by chapter, followed by page number.
Page 19 (also, Figure 1.2 on Page 21): The function fetch_sdss_spectrum()
does not, in fact, query any database in real time. It simply retrieves a
specific file from the SDSS-I/II Data Archive Server (DAS) via http.
Page 35: Figure 1.13 is incorrectly labeled a Mercator projection. It's actually an Equirectangular projection (also known in WCS as a "Cartesian projection")
Page 47/50: there are eight entries despite the title "Seven Strategies..."
Page 60: Eq. (2.7), "less than" sign should be "greater than"
Page 76: in Figure 3.3, the (1,1) and (2,2) cells are erroneously switched.
Page 99: The line below eq. (3.60) should say "Note that for k = 1 this distribution is a Cauchy distribution", not "k = 2"
Page 109: The first sentence in the paragraph preceeding eq. 3.78 should read "If sigma_xy=0, then x and y are uncorrelated, and if also independent, we can treat them separately as two one-dimensional distributions." (that is, vanishing correlation does not necessarily imply independence)
Page 126: The denominator of the argument of the exponential of Eq. (4.2) should be sigma squared, not sigma, to better match Eq. (3.43) and lead to Eq. (4.4).
Page 130: The denominator of the argument of the exponential of Eq. (4.11) should be sigma squared, not sigma, to better match Eq. (3.43) and lead to Eq. (4.13).
Page 427: in the first paragraph of section 10.3.1, it should be omega = 2 pi f = 2 pi / P, and not (2 pi P) for the last part.
Page 437: figure 10.15: in the creation of this figure, the noise was not applied to the data before computing the periodogram. See a more detailed discussion along with an updated figure on the astroML website
Page 517: The final paragraph of section C.3 should mention that SDSS does not use Pogson magnitudes as defined in Equation C.2, but rather the asinh magnitudes, see http://www.sdss3.org/dr10/algorithms/magnitudes.php#asinh.
Page 517: The SDSS magnitude system deviates from a perfect AB system by 0.01-0.02 mags. See http://www.sdss3.org/dr10/algorithms/fluxcal.php#SDSStoAB.
Page 519: This query has to be submitted within a particular context within CasJobs, specifically DR8 or higher (DR7 does not have the value-added spectral information).
Page 519: The astrometric corrections of DR9 have not been applied to this query.
This affects the columns G.ra and G.dec. An additional join on the
AstromDR9 table is necessary to get the correct astrometry (errors are <0.5 arcsec).
See also http://www.sdss3.org/dr10/imaging/caveats.php#astrometry.
Page 519: The URL in the footnote is incorrect and it should be http://skyserver.sdss3.org/casjobs/ (only the SDSS-III CasJobs site contains DR8 and higher data).