Hans-Walter Rix (MPIA) and I had a solid conversation today about the scope of our first paper on the selection function. We want to be pedagogical in scope and content. So the argument between us is: How sophisticated to get in our selection-function model? Rix is arguing for a less sophisticated case, keeping the story and main point simple, and I am arguing for something more sophisticated, that more connects to the real decisions that people are making every day. And all this relates to exactly what toy problems we show. We came to something of a compromise position, in which we give an example where the apparent magnitude cut is the main selection, but then show what happens when you expand the sample such that other effects beyond the pure apparent magnitude cut start to affect the sample significantly. One of our points will be that as particular selection effects get fractionally smaller in impact on your sample, you don't have to model them as precisely to meet some global accuracy goals for your model of the whole population.
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