University of Groningen
Unravelling the stellar Initial Mass Function of early-type galaxies with hierarchical Bayesian
modelling
Dries, Matthijs
IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from
it. Please check the document version below.
Document Version
Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record
Publication date:
2018
Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database
Citation for published version (APA):
Dries, M. (2018). Unravelling the stellar Initial Mass Function of early-type galaxies with hierarchical
Bayesian modelling. Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
Copyright
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons).
Take-down policy
If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum.
Propositions
belonging to the dissertation
Unravelling the stellar Initial Mass Function of
Early-Type Galaxies with hierarchical
Bayesian modelling
1. The initial mass function (IMF) of early-type galaxies has a universal high-mass end and a non-universal low-mass end (Chapter 4).
2. The IMF of early-type galaxies can be inferred with two to three single stellar populations, for reasonable star formation histories (Chapter 3). 3. Hierarchical Bayesian inference of the shape of the IMF allows for an
objective comparison of different ingredients of stellar population synthesis models (Chapter 2-4).
4. The shape of the IMF provides important constraints for theoretical models of star formation.
5. The abundance pattern is not a critical factor in determining the non-universality of the IMF (Chapter 4).
6. We still do not understand the impact of Na on the inference of the IMF. (Chapter 4).
7. The ability to constrain the low-mass end of the IMF depends on the age of the stellar population, the slope of the IMF and the wavelength coverage and signal-to-noise ratio of the spectrum (Chapter 2).
8. The correlation between the slope of the IMF and velocity dispersion is a case of correlation does not imply causation.
9. It is not unscientific to take a guess, it is scientific only to say what is more likely and less likely (following Richard P. Feynman).
10. Whenever possible, politics should be based on scientific facts, but scientific facts should never be based on politics.
11. We build too many walls and not enough bridges, which applies to both science and politics (following Joseph F. Newton).
