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Some Notes On The Utility Function Of Fundamental Science Experiments

Earlier this year I mentioned here that I would be writing an article on how the utility function...

Understanding Expected Limits, Observed Limits, Exclusion Regions In Particle Physics Graphs

I recently got engaged in a conversation with a famous retired mathematician / cosmologist about...

Establishing Benchmarks For Use Of AI In Fundamental Science: Two Proposals To Move Forward

These days I am in the middle of a collaborative effort to write a roadmap for the organization...

Optimization In Valencia

Last week I was in Valencia, to attend the fourth MODE Workshop on Differentiable Programming for...

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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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Besides the usual share of random readers who google something and get directed here by mere chance (to be read: by the sheer amount of valuable information I have posted here), this blog is read by an interesting mix of particle physicists, students, experts in other fields of Physics, and Science amateurs -plus a small number of science reporters looking for news.

Of course I love each and every one of my faithful readers like good teachers love their pupils, but among the varied crowd, the readers which I am most happy to host here are students and amateurs, because they provide me with true motivation for spending my time writing popularization articles. Without them, many of my posts would lose their meaning.
"Non ho mai chiesto di occuparmi di mafia. Ci sono entrato per caso. E poi ci sono rimasto per un problema morale. La gente mi moriva attorno"

(I never asked to work on mafia. I got to do it by chance. And then I continued because of a moral issue. People around me kept dying.)

Paolo Borsellino (Italian Judge, killed by mafia in 1992)
One year ago, a paper by a distinguished group of theorists announced first evidence of new physics from measurements of the properties of B_s mesons performed at the Tevatron by the CDF and DZERO experiments. They had combined all the available information, obtaining a result which disagreed with the Standard Model (SM) prediction by more than three standard deviations.
The happy nights of Italy's Premier Silvio Berlusconi, now documented in hot recordings taken by Escort Patrizia D'Addario, have by now circled the free world (in Italy they are only available to readers of a couple of newspapers allegedly "hostile to the government", Repubblica and L'Espresso).
A new paper on the ArXiV caught my attention this evening for several reasons. First of all, because two of its five authors (J.Ellis, J.R.Espinosa, G.F.Giudice, A.Hoecker, and A.Riotto) are (or have been) my colleagues in Padova University; second, because the title is quite catchy; third, because indeed the results it presents are valuable food for thought.
"Other people's data ntuples are a bit like their genitals. You may occasionally be allowed to play with them, but you should not expect to be granted unhindered access."

Unknown (the previous attribution to M. F. is fallacious)