2026-08-21

Why do we astrophysics? - David Hogg

Why do we do astrophysics? by David W. Hogg ^[1]

But it does have a strange consequence, which is also related to professionalization: For some kinds of projects in astrophysics, there isn’t a huge difference in capability between a classically trained astronomer and a newly trained data scientist. Indeed, in many ways, the data scientist is better prepared to work in astronomy than the astronomer, since the data scientist knows how to do fast computation on large data sets, build complex probabilistic models, and perform large-scale optimizations or searches. For analysis of the Gaia data, a data scientist who has taken an astronomy class might be better prepared than an astronomer who has taken a data science class.