Advanced Statistical Methods for Large-Scale Structure Studies

Abstract

These Lecture Notes are devoted to an introductory description of some of the most widely applied statistical methods for the analysis of the Large-Scale Structure (LSS) of the Universe. Rather than providing technical details about the implementation of such methods, I concentrate more on their significance and on the statistical information they provide in the comparison between data and LSS formation models. I introduce the concept of correlation functions and their connection with the count-in-cell statistics of a point distribution. Also some geometrical descriptions of the LSS, like the void probability function and the topological genus characteristics, are briefly reviewed.