Related papers: Statistical Issues in Searches for New Physics
Recent developments in the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics have brought the theory closer to that of classical probability and statistics. On the other hand, the unique character of quantum physics sets many of the questions…
A short summary is made of several searches for new physics performed at the highest LEP2 energies.
The statistical methods used in deriving physics results in the BaBar collaboration are reviewed, with especial emphasis on areas where practice is not uniform in particle physics.
A personal view of current prospectives in particle physics is presented, inspired by the contributions to this meeting. Particular emphasis is laid in precision tests of the Standard Model and the search for the Higgs boson, on probes of…
A new class of identical particles which may exhibit both Bose and Fermi statistics with respective probabilities $p_b$ and $p_f$ is introduced. Such an uncertainity may be either an intrinsic property of a particle or can be viewed as an…
Some general considerations on the notion of entropy in physics are presented. An attempt is made to clarify the question of the differentiation between physical entropy (the Clausius-Boltzmann one) and quantities called entropies…
The concept of the "statistical significance" of an observation, and how it is used in particle physics experiments is reviewed. More properly known as a "p-value," the statistical foundations for this concept are reviewed from a freqentist…
We propose a method to estimate the probability of new physics discovery in future high energy physics experiments. Physics simulation gives both the average numbers $<N_b>$ of background and $<N_s>$ of signal events. We find that the…
Particle physics experiments such as those run in the Large Hadron Collider result in huge quantities of data, which are boiled down to a few numbers from which it is hoped that a signal will be detected. We discuss a simple probability…
We begin our journey by recalling the fundamentals of Probability Theory that underlie one of its most significant applications to real-world problems: Parametric Estimation. Throughout the text, we systematically develop this theme by…
The best way to search for new physics is by using a diverse set of probes - not just experiments at the energy and the cosmic frontiers, but also the low-energy measurements relying on high precision and high luminosity. One example of…
Statistical methods are indispensable to scientific inference. However, there exists a longstanding tension across a wide range of scientific disciplines about the role that ``context'' should play in the application of statistical methods…
A frequentist definition of sensitivity of a search for new phenomena is discussed, that has several useful properties. It is based on completely standard concepts, is generally applicable, and has a very clear interpretation. It is…
We discuss the prospects for high-energy neutrino astronomy to study particle physics in the energy regime comparable to and beyond that obtainable at the current and planned colliders. We describe the various signatures of high-energy…
We propose exploiting symmetries (exact or approximate) of the Standard Model (SM) to search for physics Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) using the data-directed paradigm (DDP). Symmetries are very powerful because they provide two samples…
The statistical methods used by the ATLAS Collaboration for setting upper limits or establishing a discovery are reviewed, as they are fundamental ingredients in the search for new phenomena. The analyses published so far adopted different…
The existence of New Physics particles can be probed by performing precision measurements of physics phenomena at the few GeV energy scale. The decays of B and D mesons are an excellent example of relatively low energy phenomena that can be…
This paper discusses a statistical anomaly-detection method for model-independent searches for new physics in collision events produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The method requires calculations of $Z$-scores for a large number of…
Algorithmic statistics considers the following problem: given a binary string $x$ (e.g., some experimental data), find a "good" explanation of this data. It uses algorithmic information theory to define formally what is a good explanation.…
Although not as wide, and popular, as that of quantum mechanics, the investigation of fundamental aspects of statistical mechanics constitutes an important research field in the building of modern physics. Besides the interest for itself,…