Abstract
We provide a formal mathematical analysis of the “Power Spectrum Analysis” (PSA) method by Yu and Peebles (1969), including illustrative controlled numerical experiments, to better understand their properties. The PSA method generates a sequence of random numbers from observational data which, it was claimed, is exponentially distributed with unit mean and unit variance. Although the derived variable may be reasonably described by an exponential distribution over much of its range, the tail of the distribution is far removed from that of an exponential, thereby rendering statistical inference and confidence testing based on the tail of the distribution completely unreliable. We show that a recently constructed method due to Guthrie and Napier (1996) is formally equivalent, and offers no new insights.
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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Newman, W.I., Terzian, Y. (1997). Power Spectrum Analysis and Redshift Data. In: Tifft, W.G., Cocke, W.J. (eds) Modern Mathematical Models of Time and their Applications to Physics and Cosmology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5628-8_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-5628-8_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-6372-2
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