SMOOTHED NONPARAMETRIC-ESTIMATION OF THE LUMINOSITY FUNCTION FOR FLUX-LIMITED SAMPLES

Citation
D. Caditz et V. Petrosian, SMOOTHED NONPARAMETRIC-ESTIMATION OF THE LUMINOSITY FUNCTION FOR FLUX-LIMITED SAMPLES, The Astrophysical journal, 416(2), 1993, pp. 450-457
Citations number
29
Categorie Soggetti
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Journal title
ISSN journal
0004637X
Volume
416
Issue
2
Year of publication
1993
Part
1
Pages
450 - 457
Database
ISI
SICI code
0004-637X(1993)416:2<450:SNOTLF>2.0.ZU;2-#
Abstract
A smoothed nonparametric method for estimating the intrinsic distribut ion of truncated sample data is described. This method determines both the cumulative and differential forms of the distribution, and it doe s not suffer from the numerical fluctuations associated with histogram distributions commonly used to describe such data. Variation of a sin gle smoothing parameter provides a convenient means of error estimatio n and allows for differentiation between random fluctuations and subtl e features which may exist in the parent distribution. The smoothing m ethod is useful for obtaining distribution functions for flux or magni tude-limited astronomical data, and as an example, we calculate the sm oothed luminosity function of a flux-limited sample of approximately 5 00 quasars.