Statistics data analysis is one of those things that experimental physicists learn along the way. It is not a topic usually included in the curriculum studiorum of physics students at Universities: only few basic ingredients are taught during laboratory courses, and not much is added to that during a typical Ph.D. program.
One usually learns the most common tools to fit histograms, combine measurements, estimate uncertainties on the field, as these things are always needed to produce publishable physics results. But several key statistical concepts often remain fuzzy and obscure in the mind of a large fraction of experimental physicists throughout their career. I know this because this happened to me, too - for quite a few years after my graduation.
[The title of this article comes from a T-shirt with ten advices on what to do when everything else fails]
It has always surprised me to realize how confident we physicists are of the good faith of our colleagues. We may argue endlessly over one graph or result, getting to the point of publically casting doubts on the dexterity or intelligence of our peers (yes, I've seen that), but we never seem to doubt -privately or otherwise- their scientific integrity.
"The cusp in the dark matter distribution required to explain the recently found excess in the gamma-ray spectrum at energies of 130 GeV in terms of the dark matter annihilations cannot survive the tidal forces if it is offset by 1.5° from the Galactic center as suggested by observations."
Dmitry Gorbunov, Peter Tinjakov, "
On the offset of a DM Cusp and the interpretation of the 130 GeV line as a DM signal",
Arxiv:1212.0488
"Oh Wind, if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ?"
Good old Shelley inspired me to start today's article with the above verse, taken from his magnificent "Ode to the West Wind". With the weather we are experiencing these days in Geneva and northern Italy, I found it a relieving thought...
So, winter conferences are over, and summer ones are still far away. This is therefore a nice moment to try an assessment on the quality of the results that the two competing CERN experiments have produced on the study of the Higgs boson. Why ? Because we are not going to have to change our conclusions in a short time scale caused by a result about to be published.
How to compare the results
The results of a third-party investigation of Rossi's E-CAT reactor
have appeared on the Cornell arxiv, and the conclusions of the tests are at the very least startling:
Holiday Chess Riddle
Why Measure The Top Quark Production Cross Section?
The Buried Lottery
Twenty Years Blogging
