As telescopes, detectors, and computers grow ever more powerful, the volume of data at the disposal of astronomers and astrophysicists will enter the petabyte domain, providing accurate measurements for billions of celestial objects. This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the cutting-edge statistical methods needed to efficiently analyze complex data sets from astronomical surveys such as the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, the Dark Energy Survey, and the upcoming Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. It serves as a practical handbook for graduate students and advanced undergraduates in physics and astronomy, and as an indispensable reference for researchers. The book presents a wealth of practical analysis problems, evaluates techniques for solving them, and explains how to use various approaches for different types and sizes of data sets. For all applications described in the book, Python code and example data sets are provided. The supporting data sets have been carefully selected from contemporary astronomical surveys (for example, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey) and are easy to download and use. The accompanying Python code is publicly available, well documented, and follows uniform coding standards. Together, the data sets and code enable readers to reproduce all the figures and examples, evaluate the methods, and adapt them to their own fields of interest.

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The involvement of macromolecules in the formation of biological and other membranes has important implications for structural biology and nanoengineering. Using cetyl polyethylenimines of varying molecular weight and hydrophobicity, it was found that polymer hydrophobicity (mol % cetylation) controlled the nature of the self-assembly, giving micellar (cetyl groups < 23 mol %), vesicular (cetyl groups = 23−42 mol % or cetyl groups = 3−42 mol % with cholesterol), and dense nanoparticle (cetyl groups ≥ 49 mol %) aggregates. Thick (up to 15 nm) membranes due to the polyelectrolyte coating with the amphiphile were observed with low levels of cetylation only, and both dn/dc (indirectly) and vesicle/nanoparticle size (directly) varied linearly with mol % cetylation (r = 0.96−0.99).

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