English

An Ad-Hoc Method for Obtaining chi**2 Values from Unbinned Maximum Likelihood Fits

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability 2008-07-02 v2 High Energy Physics - Experiment Nuclear Experiment

Abstract

A common goal in an experimental physics analysis is to extract information from a reaction with multi-dimensional kinematics. The preferred method for such a task is typically the unbinned maximum likelihood method. In fits using this method, the likelihood is a goodness-of-fit quantity in that it effectively discriminates between available hypotheses; however, it does not provide any information as to how well the best hypothesis describes the data. In this paper, we present an {\em ad-hoc} procedure for obtaining chi**2/n.d.f. values from unbinned maximum likelihood fits. This method does not require binning the data, making it very applicable to multi-dimensional problems.

Cite

@article{arxiv.0807.0015,
  title  = {An Ad-Hoc Method for Obtaining chi**2 Values from Unbinned Maximum Likelihood Fits},
  author = {M. Williams and C. A. Meyer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0807.0015},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

13 pages, 10 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T10:56:07.523Z