English

On combining significances. Some trivial examples

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability 2010-12-03 v1

Abstract

For Poisson distribution Pois(n,λ)Pois(n, \lambda) with λ1\lambda \gg 1, n1n \gg 1 we propose to determine significance as S=nobsλλS = \frac{n_{obs}-\lambda}{\sqrt{\lambda}}. The significance SS coincides up to sign with often used significance. For experiments which measure the same quantities the natural but not unique rule for significance combining is Scomb(S1,S2)=S1σ1+S2σ2σ12+σ22S_{comb}(S_1, S_2) = \frac{S_1\sigma_1+S_2\sigma_2}{\sqrt{\sigma^2_1+\sigma^2_2}}, where σ1\sigma_1 and σ2\sigma_2 are variations. We also propose the rule for significances combining for the case with systematic errors.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1012.0465,
  title  = {On combining significances. Some trivial examples},
  author = {N. V. Krasnikov and S. I. Bityukov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1012.0465},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

6 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-21T16:52:29.969Z