A pitfall in the use of extended likelihood for fitting fractions of pure samples in mixed samples
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
2010-11-11 v2 High Energy Physics - Experiment
Abstract
The paper elucidates, with an analytic example, a subtle mistake in the application of the extended likelihood method to the problem of determining the fractions of pure samples in a mixed sample from the shape of the distribution of a random variable. This mistake, which affects two widely used software packages, leads to a misestimate of the errors.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0803.2711,
title = {A pitfall in the use of extended likelihood for fitting fractions of pure samples in mixed samples},
author = {A. Nappi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0803.2711},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
10 pages with 1 figure, to appear in Computer Physics Communications. New version including major changes and additions, resulting from discussion with journal reviewers