In the last few seconds of Mierle's visit, I realized that he might be the perfect person to execute the experimental design project I envision on filter curves for optical astronomy. Right now we all use filters (like UBVRI or ugrizy) that were hand-designed by humans for intuitive goals. I don't think there is any sense in which any filter system (even the exceedingly complex COMBO-17 set) was shown to be the optimum of anything; that is, I don't think anyone has found the best set of filters for any objective.
Well, this was a first approach using photo-z's as the objective, but I'm sure the optimization could be improved...
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Coryn Bailer-Jones also did this one with Gaia in mind:
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