Various Memos

Most of the memos that I have written are specific to the Chandra X-ray Observatory. On this page you will find links to some that may be of more general interest. I am placing them here in the hope that the reader will find them to be of some pedagogical value.

• The Multilayer Reflectivity memo presents a self-contained derivation of the reflection and transmission probabilties of a plane classical electromagnetc wave incident upon a multilayer with complex indices of refraction.
• The Combining Error Ellipses memo was written to show how to combine a number of independent estimates of a source's position to obtain an improved estimate of its position. Here I have adopted a general multivariate approach and discuss tangent plane projections.
• Creating the ``Behr Memo'' was my introduction to Bayesian methods. Here the technique is applied to the ratio of two Poisson rates (a hardness ratio).