Meeting 3/2/18: AAS meeting plans

MEETING ABOUT AAS abstract, presentation, and paper

Arkansas Academy of Sciences meeting will be at ASU this year.
- ABSTRACT: 
We need an abstract for Richard so he can register and upload it. We should pass around drafts for us to comment on. Base it on Venkat's and Rohit's reports. Registration, abstract(s), registration fee and membership dues are due by March 11, see http://www.astate.edu/a/ortt/aas/.
         Q: What should we put in the abstract? RS will compose a draft from RD and VK's report drafts.
         Q: Title? Steps Toward Measuring World Space Exploration Mission Activity
- MEETING:
Meeting will be at ASU on April 6-7, 2018
- PRESENTATION:
RS needs some draft slides from Rohit and Venkat including figures, conclusions, statement of research problems, to prepare his presentation.
- PAPER:
A journal paper submittal is due 2 days before the conference. April 4. We need an outline of a paper so we can start filling it in. DB should start.
        Q: What should we put in it?
        A: Rohit suggests % contribution from each country. Maybe # countries over time. Also find weights for the different destinations that lead to smooth results, thus forming a hypothesis that extrapolates well and provides testable predictions about future activity.
Venkat suggests: purpose, launch site, distance from the surface; numbers over time. Patterns in the data. Why are there spikes in the data? % of successful vs. failed launches over time? Comparisons of countries.
                         OUTLINE OF PAPER AND WRITING PROCESS
Abstract
1. motivation
2. background (literature review)
    HA adds one sentence to the discussion of each reference stating how relevant it is to the paper and why.
    HA reorder the references from least relevant to most relevant.
    DB drafts a literature review from the annotated, ordered list of discussions.
    Everyone reads/critiques the draft and we continue from there
3. Data Analysis
    Intro statement
    3.1 Visits to extraterrestrial bodies (based on Rohit's work)
            3.1.1 Graph of % contribution from each country over time.
                     Analysis: Statistical variance over time, showing steady decrease(?)
                     Discussion: notice # of countries increasing over time; graph of it
            3.1.2 Graph of total points for all countries, each year
                     Analysis: find the right different weights for different destinations
                           A more or less monotonically increasing curve is a good result
    3.2 Satellite trends (based on Venkat's work)
            3.2.1 Graph and discussion of satellite *purpose*
            3.2.2 Graph and discussion of *launch site*
            3.2.3 Graph and discussion of *orbital distance*
            3.2.4 Graph and discussion of successful vs. failed launches over time
            3.2.5 Graph and discussion of comparisons of different countries
            3.2.6 Discussion of patterns and spikes in the data
4. Discussion
    Finding weights for different destinations: it is how to generate a testable hypothesis
         Thus, it is not "overfitting" or "forcing the data to fit the hypothesis"
         A monotonic curve can be extrapolated to make predictions, thus is testable
5. Conclusions and Future Work