comparing data-driven and theory-driven models

I gave the brown-bag talk in the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics at lunch-time today. I talked about The Cannon, Ness and Rix and my data-driven model of stellar spectra. I also used the talk as an opportunity to talk about machine learning and data science in the CCPP. Various good ideas came up from the audience. One is that we ought to be able to synthesize, with our data-driven model, the theory-driven model spectra that the APOGEE team uses to do stellar parameter estimation. That would be a great idea; it would help identify where our models and the theory diverge; it might even point to improvements both for The Cannon and for the APOGEE pipelines.