MNRAS 468, 5014–5019 (2017) doi:10.

1093/mnras/stx627

Most frequent value statistics and distribution of 7 Li

abundance observations

J. Zhang1,2‹
1 Department of Mathematics and Physics, Hebei GEO University, Shijiazhuang 050016, China
2 National Astronomical Observatories/Yunnan Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650011, China

Accepted 2017 March 10. Received 2017 March 1; in original form 2017 January 23

ABSTRACT
The problem of primordial lithium is one of the key issues in many astrophysical fields, espe-
cially nuclear astrophysics and cosmology. We apply a novel modern statistical method – the
most frequent value (MFV) procedure – to study the distribution modelling for 7 Li abundance
observations, constructing a robust and effective astrostatistical algorithm. Considering prior
non-Gaussian error distributions of measurements of astrophysical quantities, the robust MFV
method is essential as a standard statistical algorithm, according to the minimization for the in-
formation loss principle. Associated with global optimization, the MFV procedure has already
been shown to be a more powerful tool than some classic statistical algorithms originating
from the least-squares or maximum likelihood principle for dealing with the unknown distri-
bution problems of observed astrophysical quantities. Applying the MFV algorithm, we obtain
the MFV M = 2.205 and the dihesion ε = 0.067 of A(Li) measurements, which demonstrate
certain advantages to solving problems with a non-Gaussian error distribution.
Key words: nuclear reactions, nucleosynthesis, abundances – methods: statistical – stars:
abundances – star: statistics.

lithium problems imply the possibilities of other unknown mecha-

1 I N T RO D U C T I O N
It is common knowledge that, based on the standard big bang model,
we can understand the nucleosynthesis of the lightest nuclei (mainly
including isotopes of H, He and Li, such as deuterium, 3 He, 4 He,
and so on) from the first ∼1 s to ∼3 min at the beginning of the Uni-
verse (Fields 2011; Bertulani & Kajino 2016; Cyburt et al. 2016;
Gustavino et al. 2016). The calculated results of big bang nucle-
osynthesis (BBN) give us a useful probe to demonstrate the diver-
sity of the chemical evolution in the early cosmos. There is no doubt
that modern cosmology has made tremendous progress, due to the
concordance of theoretical predictions and Wilkinson Microwave
Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) observations of the cosmic microwave
background, with the exception of the primordial lithium problem
(Fields 2011). There is a large non-negligible mismatch between
the observed 7 Li abundances and the BBN+WMAP predictions. Be-
sides, the second lithium problem involves 6 Li formed from the
2
H(α, γ )6 Li reaction. Applying the first fruitful measurements of
the 2 H(α, γ )6 Li reaction, Anders et al. (2014) obtained the big bang
lithium isotopic ratio, which cannot be explained by the standard
big bang model (see also Mukhamedzhanov & Shubhchintak 2016).
Using comparisons of observational data and theory, the primordial
 E-mail: zhangphysics@126.com
nisms or non-standard physics solutions.
From another perspective of stellar evolution, modern astrophys-
ical theory encounters an important unsolved problem of lithium
chemical evolution in the galaxy (Guiglion et al. 2016). It is well
known that lithium can be synthesized via nuclear reactions in the
stars. However, lithium is an easily destroyed element in a more
moderate temperature case (T ∼ 2.5 × 106 K; e.g. stellar interiors
via the 7 Li(p, α)4 He reaction) and a relatively lower temperature
(T ∼ 2 × 106 K) for 6 Li. So, the observed isotopic abundances of
lithium have provided a critical constraint not only for standard BBN
but also for stellar evolution (Casey et al. 2016; Cyburt et al. 2016).
Therefore, measurements of lithium abundance have played a vital
role in the astrophysics and astronomy of the early Universe. By
observing the spectra of absorption lines of atmospheres in stars,
astronomers have obtained the lithium abundance. In view of the
difficulties of measuring 6 Li (which needs higher resolution R ≈
100 000 and high signal-to-noise ≈500), we generally investigate
the observed abundance of 7 Li.
There are many astrophysical channels to produce lithium, in-
cluding Galactic cosmic rays (Reeves 1970), core-collapse (Hart-
mann et al. 1999), novae (Arnould & Norgaard 1975; Tajitsu
et al. 2015), cool bottom-burning in low-mass giants (Sackmann
& Boothroyd 1999), hot bottom-burning in asymptotic giant branch
(AGB) stars (Abia, Pavlenko & de Laverny 1999), etc. However,
the problem of observed Li-rich giants is still not well understood

C 2017 The Author

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society


(Casey et al. 2016). According to classical stellar structure and
evolution, the lithium abundance should present a tendency to de-
cline along with the giant phase, especially after first dreg up. On
the contrary, relatively younger Population I stars illustrate unex-
pectedly higher abundance than that of metal-poor Population II
stars. Most puzzlingly, there exist more than a dozen red giants that
show very high lithium abundances. Some abundances A(Li) even
exceed 3, largely beyond the prediction of standard BBN, where
A(Li) = 12 + lg[n(Li)/n(H)] and n denotes the atom number density
(Kirby et al. 2012). This means that other unknown mechanisms
of forming lithium cannot be ruled out, probably involving mixing
mechanisms.
In addition, the meteoritic and solar photospheric abundances
of lithium are 3.26 and 1.05 dex, respectively (Grevesse, Asplund
& Sauval 2007; Lodders & Palme 2009), which demonstrate the
lithium chemical evolution history. Obviously, the observed abun-
dance of lithium is a powerful probe for understanding the pri-
mordial lithium problem in the early cosmos. For a few decades,
researchers have measured many samples of primordial abundances
in standard BBN and photospheric lithium abundances, observed in
metal-poor stars including dwarfs and giants. However, the mea-
surements of lithium unexpectedly disagree with the predictions of
standard theory. There is a vital gap between the primordial lithium
abundance, A(Li) ∼ 2.6 dex (Spergel et al. 2003, 2007) and that of
the Spite plateau, A(Li) ∼ 2.2 dex (Spite & Spite 1982a,b). Clearly,
it is very important to determine a reliable value of lithium abun-
dance on the Spite plateau, and this has motivated us to investigate
a new reliable statistical method.
Tremendous advances have been made in astrostatistics studies
related to many astrophysical fields (Podariu et al. 2001; Chen &
Ratra 2003, 2011; Wall & Jenkins 2012; Crandall & Ratra 2015;
Chen, Kumar & Ratra 2017). There are various statistical methods
to deal with the problems of astrophysical measurements (e.g. big
data of abundances). One of the most common means of astrostatis-
tics is the conventional χ 2 approach, which assumes a statistically
independent Gaussian error distribution and known error bars with-
out systematic effects (Gott et al. 2001). Gott et al. argued that
median statistics was another useful method in comparison with the
χ 2 approach, due to fewer assumptions about the data set. Moreover,
Avelino, Martins & Pinto (2002) further promoted previous work
and applied modified median statistics to investigate Type Ia super-
novae data. The more widely applied median statistics, discussed
in Chen & Ratra (2003), constrains the mass density of the cosmos.
Furthermore, Chen & Ratra (2011) used a median statistical method
to assess the Hubble constant (H0 ) and they estimated systematic
errors for different statistical techniques. Based on the weighted
mean and median statistics, Crandall & Ratra (2014) found good
consistency by estimating cosmological parameter values. Recently,
Crandall et al. have investigated the error distribution of the distance
moduli measurements of the Large Magellanic Cloud (Crandall &
Ratra 2015) and 7 Li abundance observations (Crandall, Houston &
Ratra 2015), which have illustrated the non-Gaussianity of error
distribution. It can be seen that the uncertainties and distributions
of scientific measurements are attracting more widespread interest
in physical and astrophysical fields (Bailey 2017).
In this paper, we use a novel method – the most frequent value
(MFV) procedure (Steiner 1988, 1991, 1997; Steiner & Haja-
gos 2001; Kemp 2006; Szucs, Civan & Virag 2006; Szegedi 2013;
Szegedi & Dobroka 2014) – to evaluate lithium abundances on the
Spite plateau. The MFV technique has been applied in some sub-
jects, but mainly in geosciences at present. In the next section, we
describe the observation and data selection. In Section 3, we intro-
MFV statistics and distribution of 7 Li 5015
duce the MFV procedure and the numerical calculation algorithm.
The final section contains results and a discussion.
2 O B S E RVAT I O N S A N D DATA S E T S E L E C T I O N
Because metal-poor Population II stars probably keep the primor-
dial chemical abundance of their predecessor molecular cloud in
the early galaxy (Sneden, Cowan & Gallino 2008; Zhang, Cui
& Zhang 2010a,b), the observational abundances of lithium in
metal-poor dwarfs or early subgiants are the critical observed con-
straints, independent of that of standard BBN+WMAP for the cos-
mic lithium problem. Spite & Spite (1982a,b) first showed that
shallow convection zones in metal-deficient warm dwarfs should
preserve the fossil abundances of lithium, and that they demon-
strated approximately the same observational lithium abundance
(i.e. the Spite plateau), no matter how temperature and metallicity
vary within the scope of −2.4 ≤ [Fe/H] ≤ −1.4 and 5700  Teff 
6250 K (Bonifacio et al. 2007; Spite, Spite & Bonifacio 2012; Fu
et al. 2015). Therefore, the identification of lithium abundance on
the Spite plateau is pivotal in order to constrain the standard the-
ory, and this has inspired us to evaluate the more accurate lithium
abundances on the Spite plateau according to the new statistic
method.
In particular, we do not take the non-local thermodynamic equi-
librium (NLTE) into consideration because of the small comprehen-
sive effects of three-dimensional (3D) hydrodynamic characteristics
and the NLTE of stellar atmospheres (Korn et al. 2006). Following
the selection of Crandall et al. (2015) and Spite et al. (2012), we
choose metal-poor stars with −2.8 ≤ [Fe/H] ≤ −2.0 and 5900  Teff
in order to reflect the primordial lithium abundance. Consequently,
stars beyond these ranges of metallicity and effective temperature
will be ruled out. Ultimately, we simply analyse the 66 measure-
ments of lithium abundance similar to Crandall et al. (2015), which
are shown in Fig. 1.
3 THEORETICAL MODEL
In astrophysical fields, the parameter estimation of the observed
measurements is a vital task. For years, many algorithms have been
constructed. The most common methods are the weight mean and
least-squares method (LSM), which require that the observed mea-
surements obey the Gaussian distribution. However, the observa-
tions of astrophysical quantities show that the LSM is often more
vulnerable to the effects of outliers in measurements than other ro-
bust methods. In particular, if the error distribution of the observed
data is non-Gaussian, then the application of the LSM is impossibly
optimal. Unfortunately, some statistical methods based on the LSM
often are used to deal with astrophysical measurements without
considering the non-Gaussian error distribution.
The error distribution is of great significance in the analysis of the
measurements. Obviously, it is necessary to apply two procedures to
assess the characteristics of Li abundances. One method is to apply
the Gaussian approximation, which is dependent on the maximum
likelihood principle or the LSM. The other method is to use the
MFV procedure via the iteration algorithm, which relies on the
minimization for the information loss principle, almost regardless
of the given priori limiting distribution. The MFV procedure is
a new efficient robust method, proposed by Steiner (1991, 1997)
and Szucs et al. (2006) for geophysics. In order to remove the
weakness involving the low effectiveness and high sensitivity of
sparsely distributed big data, Steiner argued for the adoption of the
MNRAS 468, 5014–5019 (2017)
5016 J. Zhang

Figure 1. Count, probability density (red line) and box-plot of Li observations. [A colour version of this figure is available in the online version.]

maximum reciprocals principle, 4 R E S U LT S A N D D I S C U S S I O N

 1 We have fitted Weibull, gamma and lognormal distributions to A(Li)
= max, (1)
i
Xi2 + S 2 data using maximum likelihood estimation, as shown in Fig. 2.
Four classical goodness-of-fit plots are shown, including a den-
where Xi denotes the residuals and deviations and S denotes the sity plot, the empirical cumulative distribution function (CDF)
measurement error. Based on the minimization of the information plot, Q–Q plot and P–P plot in statistics. With more observa-
divergence (relative entropy) denoting the measure of information tions of Li abundances, we can obviously demonstrate the presence
loss (Huber 1981; Steiner 1991, 1997), Steiner proposed the MFV and magnitude of discrepancies among different distributions and
procedure and the scaling factor ε called dihesion, in order to evalu- measurements.
ate the parameter of scale in such a way as to reduce the information By fitting the lithium abundance measurements to common dis-
loss. Furthermore, the MFV and the dihesion can be obtained via tributions including Cauchy and Student’s t, Crandall et al. (2015)
iterations. In the (j + 1)th step of the MFV procedure, the corre- gave A(Li) = 2.21 ± 0.065 and found the characteristics of the
sponding formula of iterations for the MFV M are non-Gaussian error distribution of lithium observations in the Spite
 n  2   2  2  plateau. The non-Gaussian data might not be uncommon in astro-
i=1 εj x i / εj + xi − M j physics and other fields (Chen, Gott & Ratra 2003; Bailey 2017). It
Mj +1 =     2  . (2) is very interesting and important to distinguish between the Gaus-
n
i=1 εj / εj + xi − Mj
2 2
sianity and non-Gaussianity when observers deal with big data anal-
ysis. Because of the central limit theorem, Gaussian statistics have
Here, xi is a series of observations and the dihesion εj can be calcu-
been applied to nearly every field. However, if errors do not match
lated by
the Gaussian assumption, researchers have to be cautious when

 
n  2   2  2 2 choosing the appropriate statistical method. Even assuming that the
3 i=1 εk xi − Mj
4
/ εk + xi − Mj observed distribution curve seems to be bell-shaped, we still can-
εk+1
2
=
  .
2 2
(3) not determine whether it is Gaussian. For example, considering a
n 
i=1 εk / εk + xi − Mj
4 2
Student’s t-distibution with one degree of freedom (i.e. the stan-
dard Cauchy distribution or Breit–Wigner distribution), we cannot
In the first step, the initial value M0 for the iteration is given as obtain the finite mean and variance of the Cauchy distribution via
the average value of the measurements, and the initial value of ε is integration (Walck 2007). This implies an exception of the central
defined as limit theorem.
√ From another perspective, if we suppose two independent
3
ε0 = (xmax − xmin ). (4) stochastic variables A and B with standard Gaussian distributions,
2 the distribution of the ratio A/B is, surprisingly, the Cauchy form.
We can set the threshold criterion that constrains the accuracy in More amazingly, the distribution of the superposition of many inde-
iterations. After a defined number of iterations, the calculation can pendent Cauchy-distributed variables still remains a Cauchy form,
be stopped when the dihesion is smaller than the threshold value regardless of the sample size. Obviously, this demonstrates the lim-
(e.g. 10−5 ). Finally, the MFV M and the dihesion ε are given as itation of applying standard Gaussian statistics to some physical
a result. In particular, unlike the standard deviation in the LSM, cases, such as the ratio form problem, even though both numerator
the dihesion ε is an important parameter and is not sensitive to the and denominator obey the Gaussian distribution (Walck 2007). Fur-
outliers. thermore, it is essential that not all observed symmetrical unimodal

MNRAS 468, 5014–5019 (2017)

 MFV statistics and distribution of 7 Li 5017

Figure 2. Four goodness-of-fit plots for various distributions fitted to observed abundances of Li, including Weibull, gamma and lognormal distributions fitted
to serving sizes from the measurements. [A colour version of this figure is available in the online version.]

distributions are Gaussian. Thus, we have to investigate a robust
statistical approach that can be applied to various distributions in-
cluding Gaussian and non-Gaussian distributions.
Here, using the MFV procedure, we determine the Li abundance
of the Spite plateau and we attain the MFV M = 2.205 and the
dihesion ε = 0.067, which illustrate certain advantages when deal-
most, and is not affected by the extremal observed points. Nonethe-
less, the mode is not fit when the occurring numbers are the same.
Also, there is no unique mode when the distribution of observations
is multi-peak.
In order to overcome the above shortcoming of the classic statis-
tical method, the MFV applies a new weight function
ing with problems with the non-Gaussian error distribution. These
2
results are very similar to the estimated value 2.21 ± 0.065 of Cran-
dall et al. (2015), but might present a larger difference between the
approaches of the two different principles along with the increase of
observations. This is expected as a result of asymptotically unimodal
distributions of the present observed data, as shown in top-left panel
of Fig. 2 . In this case, the MFV should be a close approximation to
the median value used in Crandall et al. (2015). Because the error
distribution of Li is just not normal (Crandall et al. 2015), the results
of the MFV method are more credible than other statistical methods
based on the Gaussian distribution (Steiner 1991, 1997).
There are several improvements over the LSM or other traditional
statistical algorithms in astrophysical fields. For example, the me-
dian statistical method only requires independent observations and
is free of systematic errors, without having to consider the Gaussian
feature (Gott et al. 2001). However, the MFV is different from the
median, although some features are similar. In general, the median
is robust to parameters and not sensitive to outliers or mistakes,
but it is not representative enough relative to the MFV procedure
(Steiner 1991, 1997). For instance, when the sample space of the
measurements is not large, there is a relatively great difference be-
tween the median and the average value. Moreover, because of the
lack of stability, when the sample space of the measurements is
large, the median is often affected by the middle term of the se-
quence of observations. Besides, the MFV is not the mode of the
generic statistics. Generally, the mode is the number that occurs

n
1
F (ε) = ε3 , (5)
i=1
ε + (xi − M)2
2
which controls well the accuracy of the measurements for reducing
the effect of the dihesion ε from data fluctuation. Furthermore, the
statistical efficiency of the MFV method largely exceeds that of the
LSM (Steiner 1991, 1997).
In addition, it is very important that the descriptive statistics de-
termine the symmetry of observational data and heavy-tailed or
light-tailed characteristics of distributions. This characterization of
measurements is generally represented by skewness and kurtosis.
The skewness–kurtosis graph proposed by Cullen & Frey (1999) is
shown in Fig. 3, which helps us to understand the relations between
the observed true distribution and common various distributions
(Gaussian, uniform, logistic, exponential). Meanwhile, we also ap-
ply the non-parametric bootstrap procedure to assess the uncertainty
of the evaluated results of skewness and kurtosis originating from
the measurements (Efron & Tibshirani 1994). The estimated skew-
ness and kurtosis are −0.146 and 2.554, respectively. From Figs 2
and 3, we can find the difference between the distributions of sim-
ulations and the observed distribution of Li abundances.
To sum up, accurately determining the A(Li) value in the Spite
plateau serves a key role in many astrophysical fields, especially nu-
clear astrophysics and cosmology. Because there is a non-Gaussian
error distribution of A(Li), we adopt the MFV procedure according
MNRAS 468, 5014–5019 (2017)
5018 J. Zhang
Observation
bootstrapped values
kurtosis
10
square of skewness
Figure 3. Cullen and Frey graph. [A colour version of this figure is available in the online version.]
to the minimization of the information loss, rather than the weighted
mean method and the median statistics. The results of the MFV
method are more robust and efficient, but still – as the calculated
results present – almost as good as previous classic works (Crandall
et al. 2015). Obviously, this algorithm has enormous potential for
observed astrophysical fields, such as the observed data of Type Ia
supernova (Han & Podsiadlowski 2004; Wang & Han 2012; Riess
et al. 1998; Perlmutter et al. 1999).
AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S
I would like to thank the anonymous referee for useful comments
and suggestions. I acknowledge B. Zhang and Z-W. Han for their
kind help with this work, as described in the paper. I also ac-
knowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation
of China (Grant Nos 11547041, 11403007, 11673007, 11643007,
11333004, U1531130, 11673059, 11390374 and 11521303) and
the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Nos KJZD-EW-M06-01 and
QYZDB-SSW-SYS00).
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