Fermilab Set to Reveal “Interesting” Higgs Boson Results

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/02/17/fermilab-set-to-reveal-interesting-higgs-boson-results/

by loboman • 14 years ago

32 11 14 years ago

blogs.scientificamerican.com

yanowitz• 14 years ago

Would this really be telling us anything? Presumably, they've chosen 5-sigma for a good reason (they make so many observations?). So what would a 3-sigma result signify?

GavinB• 14 years ago

At three or four sigmas we could be pretty sure it's true. At five sigmas we're willing to bet the next generation of scientific research on it.

gus_massa• 14 years ago

The LHC has two independent detector/teams: Atlas y CMS. Each one announced last December "evidence" of the existence of the Higgs Boson with a mass near ~125GeV, with a ~3 sigma significance. This is another ~3 sigma result in the same range from a different laboratory.

Combining naively the three results we get a ~sqr(3)3=~5 sigma significance. The real combination methods are more difficult, and probably involve a few Ph.D. thesis. But if someone that really knows about the subject does the calculations and get a 5 sigma result, I wouldn’t be very surprised. So another 3 sigma result in the same region is very interesting.

For the official result, I think that it is difficult to combine the results of different laboratories. Each laboratory will continue to get more data and try to get it own 5 sigma result, probably next year.

DavidSJ3• 14 years ago

Yet another example of the confusion in popular science reporting between the probability of A given B with the probability of B given A. How is this acceptable?

the Tevatron would be able to identify the Higgs with 'three-sigma' certainty. This is a statistical term that indicates the finding only has a tenth of a percent chance of being due to a random statistical fluctuation.

No no no! It actually means that random statistical fluctuation has a tenth of a percent chance of producing the finding!

extension• 14 years ago

What's the difference?

DavidSJ3• 14 years ago

It's the same as the difference between "0.1% of non-spam messages are marked as spam" (false positive rate) vs. "0.1% of messages marked as spam are not spam" (false negative rate).

espinchi• 14 years ago

Hmm are not those two sentences equivalent? That is, P(finding | random fluctuation) = 0.10

disgruntledphd2• 14 years ago

Nope, statistical significance is based on two things.

1) Assume the model is true.

2) Conditional on the model, what is the probability that the observed differences are due to chance? The p value is then the probability that a test statistic at least this extreme could have been produced by chance.

Its actually p=0.001, not p=.10 also.

Fermilab Set to Reveal “Interesting” Higgs Boson Results

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