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Tommaso DorigoRSS Feed of this column.

Tommaso Dorigo is an experimental particle physicist, who works for the INFN at the University of Padova, and collaborates with the CMS and the SWGO experiments. He is the president of the Read More »

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Where was I ?

Where was I ?

Jan 28 2012 | comment(s)

The CHIPP 2012 winter school of particle physics is over, and so is the 50th winter meeting on nuclear physics. The two events had three things in common: they were both held in renowned locations for winter sports in the Alps (Engelberg, Switzerland, and Bormio, Italy); they both ran from January 22nd to 27th; and I attended both as a lecturer.
This week's edition of the CMS Times features a short piece by A.Rao where some points are made on the issue of correct statistical analysis of high-energy physics data.
...and people who like sausages, should not ask how they are made.

As a member of two large scientific collaborations (CDF and CMS), I enjoy the benefit of seeing lots of scientific publications that carry my name as an author being produced at weekly rates. This is however also a burden, since I at the very least must try to ensure that I like the way the results are produced. I.e., that I agree with the details of how these scientific measurements are made.
Elsevier is spamming my mailbox. You would not expect that from a large publishing company who makes money from publishing scientific papers, but that's what happens. I think I am not alone in receiving automated emails with your name on the subject (a typical sign that the message is junk by the way):

Dr. Dorigo, your work has been cited.

Dear Dr. T. Dorigo,

It is our pleasure to inform you that your publication has been cited in a journal published by Elsevier.
Through my colleague Marco Cirelli I got to know about the effort of 36 high-school student of Charlottesville (VA), who are fund-raising for a trip to CERN this spring. I thus visited their home page, and got favourably impressed with the organization of their campaign, which betrays their strong collective interest in the trip.
Update: I have modified the title of this post [originally: "Opera's Statistical Booboo"] and the text below (in places I marked accordingly) upon realizing, thanks to a very good point raised by a reader in the comments thread below, that the idealization I was making of the measurement described below made my conclusions too hasty. Read the text to the end if you want more detail.