re: how to learn what TASS does and how

[Herb Johnson <hjohnson@pluto.njcc.com>]

I regret that Mr. Creager was put off by my recent response and comments,
even though I tried to make the point that the problem of becoming
informed about TASS is not necessarily due only to his lack of prior
knowledge. But there is a bit more to say than that. My response is
not well edited as I don't have time to do so. That is the nature
of email dialogs: they are rapid, sometimes hasty, and occasionally
fueled by emotion and initial reactions. This is not new to the Web.

To be clearer, to use your term, I'm more "annoyed" by the lack of
common use of
Tech Notes by most TASS members, not necessarily by questions by
people unfamiliar to TASS work. I will not be the goat here for making
a case that questions can be better answered by reference to prior work
than to discussion. As Mr. Creager himself said, he had in fact printed
out the Tech Note #71 and was going to read it, but he made no reference
to that to me on the list, so I assumed he missed my suggestion to do so.
I still claim it will be informatve, and no one has countered that
claim yet.

As to the suggestion that all 70-odd TN's need to be read, that is
not the case. Each TN has a header which has keywords and some kind
of summary. Also the Tech Note Web page has a simple search engine
by keywords, to sort through the TN's. While I will agree that the
TN's are not easy to sort through or read, they are a place to start.
If I recall correctly, the TASS Home page suggests reviewing various
things before "entering the Technical Section": if they are not helpful
I hope appropriate feedback is given to the Website (Michael Richmond)
or to the authors of the documents in question. 

I observe that the "squeaky wheel gets the grease": if few people make
comments about items on the TASS Web page, one can not expect their
contents to be updated and changed, that is simple human nature. RIchmond
has responded quickly to any errors I've pointed to on the Web site. 
Likewise, few people have referenced the TN's in our public maillist;
I think they should and I believe it would be beneficial to do so.

I don't care for a suggestion that I'm less than helpful or supportive
of people new to the TASS effort. I have written more than one TN which
has consolidated other people's work, to make it easier for new people.
But the fact is that doing astrometry, photometry, image analysis, 
instrument design, database work, etc. etc.: these are not easy
propositions, and there are no commonly agreed to methods or programs or
hardware designs for this work. This is tough stuff. And TASS is not given
the resources of, say, NASA, to produce a Web site that is friendly to
people with no background in one or many of these areas. What is on
the TASS Web site is an accumulation of work-in-progress, there is not too
much in the way of tutorials.

That said, Michael Richmond has made good efforts to try to "capture"
TASS activity and progress on the Web site. There are many sections,
with many pointers to Web sites by other TASS members, as all  of us
have worked on the Mark III and Mark IV. Consequently, I'll certainly
grant it is hard to navigate such a volume of work. This is why I've
often referred to the TEch Notes, as they are more self-contained and
certainly more stable than other parts of the TASS Web site. Michael
Richmond can speak to his work better than I can, I do not mean to 
be critical of his efforts, just to make my point.

And THAT is one reason I rank review of the Web site over email
discussion. It is just too HARD to try to give a thoughtful, complete,
and technically valid response in email time; particularly to what
appear to be simple questions. One can enjoy a "good discussion" and
be informed and feel involved and so on. But at the end of the day,
the point of TASS is to get something done in a substantive and
verifiable way. And that means to be knowledgable, informed, and willing
to learn on one's own time, as well as to discuss issues and raise
questions. The TASS WEb site, and other member's sites, have an
INCREDIBLE amount of work and information on them. My Tech Note
on the Mark III points to those sites, their software, and their
results. Some members have very good sites for people interested in
how the Mark III software chain of processing worked. Mark IV will not
be much different, so those sites are still informative.

What someone WON'T find is a "roadmap" for the Mark IV. Hell, there
was not one for the Mark III until the data was processed, and then
REprocessed. And even so, no two camera sites used the same software
from camera to starlists; and not all data made it to all databases.
This is all a WORK IN PROGRESS, not "here's how we did it". FRankly,
you will find very few opportunities to see "live" work, with all
the bumps and oops and backtracks that really happen to everyone else,
except all you otherwise see is "the great discovery", or the cleaned-up
report of what in fact was the LAST effort to do X, which finally worked.

Real science is just not pretty.

So I will not be the "goat" for the apparent disorder of TASS work,
merely because I suggest that what order there IS, namely in the Tech
Notes, should be referred to often and read by new members to TASS.
It is no doubt easier to do one's work and to answer the occasional
question, or to be silent, than to stick one's neck out to say "do
some homework and read X". But I will not feel guilty for doing so,
as I've done my share to make some of this work a little bit more
accessable, and so have many other TASS members on their sites and
on the TASS Web site. The more such information is used, argued about,
or read critically, the better that material will be and the more 
informed readers of it will be.

But they have to read it, and know what to read, and maybe have
some references to interpret what they have read. This is not
all the responsibility of TASS members. But the Web is a big place,
and many other Web sites can answer more generic questions, and can
explain more fundamental how-to's and such. There are people who
have decided to do THAT kind of work, and they have my  respect and
thanks. A Web search will likely find them.

Herb Johnson

Herbert R. Johnson              http://pluto.njcc.com/~hjohnson
hjohnson@pluto.njcc.com         voice 609-771-1503, New Jersey USA

             amateur astronomer and astro-tour guide
     classic S-100 computers restoration & parts as "Dr. S-100"
   rebuilder/reseller of classic Macs for your computing pleasure
          and senior engineer at Astro Imaging Systems

On Fri, 22 Dec 2000, Robert Creager wrote:

> 
> 
> I'm sorry you're annoyed about my amateurish questions.  Some of us are 
> not in the field, so we have to ask someone.  This discussion was between 
> Tom and I about the sigma he was reporting, and my attempt to show how 
> the sigma was incorrect across the entire data set.  The posts ended up on 
> the mailing lists in general, where folks discuss items.  Oh well.  I was writing 
> software by referring to another tech note, and actually had #71 printed out, 
> but had not read it yet.  It's long reading when you're unfamiliar with the 
> material.
> 
> 
> You obviously cannot do statistics on random data from these sets because 
> of the variance in the data.  Statistics on the entire data will give a feel for 
> what the data looks like, but you're right, it's probably not real useful for 
> anything practical.  I suspect that ImageScientist is using a sampling of the 
> data, but that's neither here nor there.
> 
> 
> I don't find that the tech notes are indexed or searchable for the novice, or 
> maybe it's my general lack of knowledge which hinders me.  I cannot look at 
> the title of 71
> 
> <color><param>0100,0100,0100</param><FontFamily><param>Times New Roman</param><bigger>Technical Note {HYPERLINK "./tn0071.html"}<underline><color><param>0000,0000,FF00</param>71 </underline><color><param>0100,0100,0100</param>
> 
> <paraindent><param>left</param>Mark IV CD #5 dark images by columns and rows </paraindent>
> 
> <FontFamily><param>Arial</param><smaller>and see that it is germane to what we were (notice past tense) discussing.  
> So I've got 72 technotes to try to digest to even get up to speed.  Live and 
> learn.  I guess I'll keep my queries off the list for now, since I've a few folks 
> who don't appear to mind answering questions.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Rob
> 
> {HYPERLINK "./tn0071.html"}</color>
> 
> BTW:  Thanks for directing me to #71.  It's on the top of the reading list now.
>