2010

Asymptotic formulae for likelihood-based tests of new physics

Cowan, Glen, Cranmer, Kyle, Gross, Eilam et al.

Understand

We describe likelihood-based statistical tests for use in high energy physics for the discovery of new phenomena and for construction of confidence intervals on model parameters.

  • We focus on the properties of the test procedures that allow one to account for systematic uncertainties.
  • Explicit formulae for the asymptotic distributions of test statistics are derived using results of Wilks and Wald.
  • We motivate and justify the use of a representative data set, called the "Asimov data set", which provides a simple method to obtain the median experimental sensitivity of a search or measurement as well as fluctuations about this expectation.

Built on

  • S.S. Wilks, The large-sample distribution of the likelihood ratio for testing composite hypotheses

    1938

    Earlier work this paper cites.

  • A. Wald, Tests of Statistical Hypotheses Concerning Several Parameters When the Number of Observations is Large

    1943

    Earlier work this paper cites.

  • F. James, M. Roos, Minuit: A System for Function Minimization and Analysis of the Parameter Errors and Correlations

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    Earlier work this paper cites.

  • Isaac Asimov, Franchise

    1990

    Earlier work this paper cites.

  • R. Brun, F. Rademakers, ROOT: An object oriented data analysis framework

    1997

    Earlier work this paper cites.

  • Robert D. Cousins and Gary J. Feldman, Phys. Rev. D 57, 3873 (1998)

    1998

    Earlier work this paper cites.

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Then

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