Comments on: Predicting the Number of Hubble Proposals

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:48:48 +0000

I have now measured whether there is an effect of proposal order on acceptance rate, using Spitzer proposals (it’s not possible to do for HST from the public proposal numbers). The short answer is that there is generally not an effect, although one cycle was different for unknown reasons. See http://mingus.as.arizona.edu/~bjw/propnumber/

And yes, I was procrastinating.

By: Cusp

Cusp — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 12:24:19 +0000

Yeps – Sorry late (was traveling to Blighty)

Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 18:45:23 -0500 [19/11/09 10:45:23 EST]
From: blacker@stsci.edu

By: Brian Too

Brian Too — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:25:52 +0000

Another abuse of statistics by people who should know better. Even acknowledging the pathetically tiny dataset and selection bias doesn’t make it right. I know this isn’t supposed to be terribly serious, but it speaks to a mindset that everything “must” fit that curve. I’ve seen the abuses too often to be cavalier about the matter.

By: Brian Siana

Brian Siana — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:17:36 +0000

It’s official.

39 proposals ==> 26,801 orbits

from the announcement page:

“Thirty-nine proposals requesting a total of 26,801 orbits were submitted in response to the MCT Call. This represents an oversubscription of at least 12:1. The proposals are being distributed to the MCT TAC, who will meet in Baltimore in early January 2010. The results of their deliberations will be announced to the community by January 20th, and unsuccessful proposers will have the opportunity to recast their programs for HST Cycle 18 (Phase I deadline, February 26 2010).”

http://www.stsci.edu/institute/org/spd/mctp.html

By: NGC3314

NGC3314 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:28:34 +0000

I sense an assumption that reviewers read proposals in numerical order, which won’t always be so either in the solo preliminary reading or in the meeting discussions.

My experience (going beyond HST) suggests an extra “pro” to late proposals, or at least proposals that one didn’t spend a great deal of time on – it’s easier to sound excited if you’ve had less time to think of all your own “con” factors!

By: Julianne

Julianne — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:37:47 +0000

Brett — Steinn has long been wondering about the odds of acceptance vs proposal number. I can imagine all sorts of competing effects, and have no intuition for what might win out:

Early submitters:

Pro — (1) have their ducks in a row; (2) resubmitting a previously rejected proposal that has improved in response to comments; (3) TAC reads it when they’re fresh.

Con — (1) may be less ambitious? (2) resubmitting a previously rejected proposal, that is unlikely to ever be compelling enough, no matter how frequently its revised; (3) TAC doesn’t yet have the full context for judging a proposal’s strength

Late submitters: —

Pro –

(1) probably a larger fraction of ambitious proposals that take more time to put together; (2) TAC is increasingly grateful to find a proposal that they like, after wading through a large stack

Con –

(1) higher likelihood of being slapdash, last minute effort; (2) TAC is weary, and hates everything about everyone

And on top of it all, one probably has to take out the secondary correlation of individual PI’s average success rate. There are some people or projects that are consistently well supported by the TAC, presumedly because they consistently present compelling proposals.

By: Brett Blacker

Brett Blacker — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:13:15 +0000

We will be posting a few statistics on the Announcement page today. Just FYI, I guessed wrong myself, I was a little too high. As for HST shirts, we are in the process of taking orders hopefully in the next week or 2, so drop me an email and I will send you the link once it’s posted.

By: Steinn Sigurdsson

Steinn Sigurdsson — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:06:30 +0000

Heh. My first successful Hubble proposal was for 99 orbits, because there was no way the TAC would agree to 100+ orbits for anything.
The next successful proposal I was on broke the 100 orbit ceiling…

By: NGC3314

NGC3314 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:44:57 +0000

It’s hard to believe that, in the first few cycles of review, 40 orbits was considered an outrageous total program size, and there were strenuous arguments about every orbit of some programs (well, the equivalent since allocations weren’t originally in orbits). In some ways, this is a sign that both the observatory and the community have been maturing. Or mellowing.

By: Julianne

Julianne — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:16:39 +0000

We do appreciate it! I’m guessing the numbers are so high because there are lots of previously rejected Treasury proposals that could easily be dusted off and expanded into MCTPs. It would be a tricky business, because if you’ve already submitted to the Treasury program, then you’ve kindof admitted that you _can_ do the project through a normal allocation. The MCTP call is pretty strict that they only want to see proposals that would never have been submittable in a typical Cycle. However, good science is good science, and the TAC may well be swayed. Plus, many Treasury programs are already compromises, so at a MCTP level, people can say what they _really_ wanted to do all along.

By: NGC3314

NGC3314 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:01:29 +0000

I hope the rest of you appreciate the fact that that GZ team decided, after lengthy discussion, not to submit a multicycle proposal. ( Brett – this is no way a hint about reviewing proposals, which some of us have done for 5 cycles already).

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:09:56 +0000

@Doug – Average small HST proposals probably have several people on them, but are primarily written by one or two people. It is common for one person to be on several proposals, or even PI of more than one, because small proposals aren’t in direct conflict with each other.

For these multi-cycle proposals, they will need to have a very broad science case, so that means a lot of people contributing at least a little bit. And the other issue is conflicts. All of the multi-cycle proposals are competing directly with each other since only about 2 to 4 can likely be scheduled. And some of them are in direct conflict, for example there will be several proposals for deep extragalactic imaging whose science cases overlap at least somewhat. There are some people who are in such high demand (like Risa) that they are on more than one proposal, and there are some who can do that without having a conflict of interest, but in general I bet that there is less overlap between proposal teams than there is during a normal proposal cycle.

By: Julianne

Julianne — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:54:24 +0000

Cusp — do you have a timestamp on Brett’s email? Could use a data point in there!

By: Cusp

Cusp — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:19:16 +0000

We got ours in – 1016

By: Risa

Risa — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:38:03 +0000

1038 @ 7:46 EST

By: Julianne

Julianne — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:39:04 +0000

1032 @ 6:57 EST.

Seriously, I can’t believe there were that many groups able to pull this together.

By: Risa

Risa — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 23:50:31 +0000

1023 @ 4:42 EST

By: Tod R. Lauer

Tod R. Lauer — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:47:46 +0000

27 @ 5:05P EST

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:04:42 +0000

at 4:45 PM EST, proposal number 24 (actually 1024, and 4:45 is actually when the confirmation email was sent from Brett) was submitted. FYI, new deadline is 8 PM EST

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:47:46 +0000

Little over 3 hours to go, and we were submission 1022 – I’m assuming this makes it the 22nd proposal? That puts it pretty close to the dashed line if so.