I had a quick pair-coding session with Anu Raghunathan (NYU) today to discuss the box least squares algorithm that is used so much in finding exoplanets. We are looking at the statistics of this algorithm, with the hope of understanding it in simple cases. It is such a simple algorithm, many of the things we want to know about uncertainty and false-positive rate can be determined in closed form, given a noise model for the data. But I'm interested in things like: How much more sensitive is a search when you know (in advance) the period of the planet? Or that you have a resonant chain of planets? These questions might also have closed-form answers, but I'm not confident of them, so we are making toy data.
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