We are happy to announce the LISA Analysis Tools (LAT) Workshop. This will be a remote workshop detailing the various LISA data analysis codes developed within the LISA Analysis Tools environment.
It will take place from April 15th – April 18th, 2024, from 10am-5pm PT (Pacific Time).
This workshop is open to all, but you must register to participate.
This workshop will consist of 6 separate, but related code tutorials. Each tutorial will have the same structure. It will start with a 1.5 hour session that includes an introductory talk of ~20 min. Following a 15 minute coffee break, there will be a 1 hour session to finish the current tutorial.
The actual tutorial work will be different than in the past. Rather than having a leader-led tutorial flipping through a Jupyter notebook, the tutorials will be completed in groups (3-5 people; using breakout rooms in Zoom). Using Zoom share screen and verbal communication, these small groups will work through the tutorials together with the help of floating experts. The group work is to promote better understanding of the LAT codes, but also meet and talk with others in the field. Participants will have the option to work alone, if desired.
The six sessions are:
- Morning Day 1: Introduction to LISA Analysis Tools
- Afternoon Day 1: EMRI Waveforms, LISA Response Function
- Morning Day 2: MCMC with Eryn
- Afternoon Day 2: MBHBs & MCMC
- Morning Day 3: Trans-dimensional or RJMCMC sampling with Eryn
- Afternoon Day 3: Galactic binaries and fitting an unknown number of sources.
- Day 4: Challenge Problem (create a miniature global fit)
The materials for the workshop can be found here. Follow the install instructions in the README. If you do this, you will get a conda environment will all of the packages needed for the workshop installed and ready to use. Please install the packages prior to the workshop. There will be some time on the first day before the workshop starts to fix anything, but please try to install before the workshop and let us know if you have any issues (related: see Tutorial 0 below).
Join the slack channel here.
The tutorials are jupyter notebooks. There are also "answer keys." By "answer keys," we mean one possible way to do it. The setup and answer key for the challenge problem will be released during and after the workshop, respectively.
The tutorials are stuctured into "Tasks" and "Questions." A task will give a set of instructions as to what it is you are supposed to do. Each task will point to the exact documentation and the main imports needed to complete it. "Questions" provoke common questions in our field or push the user to consider further ramifications of what they are learning. When working in groups, these are good discussion topics.
During the workshop, for those who selected to work in groups, we will assign you a group and provide you with that assignment for each session. You will then join that breakout room when it is time to do so. The groups are chosen so that we spread out beginners to experts across the groups (self-rated during registration). Beginners will gain from the help and knowledge of experts and experts will gain a deeper understanding from helping others. Everyone will benefit from talking to new people within our area of work.
Tutorial 0: there is a Tutorial 0 (the workshop will begin with Tutorial 1). This tutorial 0 is an example tutorial that goes through useful Python skills for the workshop and general Python usage: classes, *args/**kwargs, and class inheritance. It also discusses the Python debugger pdb. This example will give you a flavor for how each tutorial during the workshop will work. Please complete this tutorial before the workshop. It will make the workshop much smoother to go through.
