English

Asymmetric Statistical Errors

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability 2007-05-23 v1 High Energy Physics - Experiment

Abstract

Asymmetric statistical errors arise for experimental results obtained by Maximum Likelihood estimation, in cases where the number of results is finite and the log likelihood function is not a symmetric parabola. This note discusses how separate asymmetric errors on a single result should be combined, and how several results with asymmetric errors should be combined to give an overall measurement. In the process it considers several methods for parametrising curves that are approximately parabolic.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.physics/0406120,
  title  = {Asymmetric Statistical Errors},
  author = {Roger Barlow},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:physics/0406120},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

14 pages, 5 figures