Bayesian approaches to testing the nature of primordial density fluctuation
Shan Luo, Ethan T. Vishniac · The Astrophysical Journal · 1995
We formulate two Bayesian gaussianity tests, one based on the posterior distribution of skewness, and the other based on the probability theory of multiple hypothesis tests, for testing the nature of the primordial density fluctuations. Tests of skewness estimation on Poisson samples show that due to the large statistical fluctuations in the estimation of the skewness, most of the samples of the galaxy distribution currently available are not large enough for obtaining a reasonably accurate estimate of the skewness of the galaxy distribution on large scales. These methods are applied to the one-dimensional pencil beam survey by Broadhurst et al. Non-Gaussian features on scales of up to 100 h^-1^ Mpc are revealed in this sample.