4 ms·

Wow. 1,959 detections out of 10^21 interactions. And they talk about statistical significance. In any other field that is so close to zero you would ignore the

Wow. 1,959 detections out of 10^21 interactions. And they talk about statistical significance. In any other field that is so close to zero you would ignore the results.

auntienomen 8y ago
Think of it this way: With 10^21 samples, you can be pretty certain that your sample mean will be the theoretical one.
- yorwba 8y ago
  The absolute error will be low, but the relative error can still be high. E.g. if you're dealing with events that have a frequency of 1 in 2 million, then 1 million samples can't have exactly 0.5 occurrences, so the relative error is at least 100%.
privong 8y ago
> Wow. 1,959 detections out of 10^21 interactions. And they talk about statistical significance. In any other field that is so close to zero you would ignore the results. 1959/1e21 is not the measure of the significance in the study though. That total of 1e21 interactions is split into different types of behaviors (based on theory and previous results). It's deltas on those categorized interactions and comparisons with noise/background models/characterizations that are used to assess the statistical significance of the 1959 events. I am not saying this has to be a true result and not a statistical fluke, but 1959/1e21 is not the "sigma" of this experiment.
deleted 8y ago
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mehwoot 8y ago
Would a biologist dismiss the evidence of having looked at say 100 cells in a human body because there are 10^13 of them in total? The latter number has no relevance in computing significance.
Bombthecat 8y ago
Didn't even need to read the article. When I saw the title I knew it was blown out of proportion:)
std_throwaway 8y ago
You need to compare it to the expected error rate. If you expect for example 100 detections due to noise but you get 1000 detections in the measurement, that would be pretty significant.
DFHippie 8y ago
Imagine you are investigating a bug you find under rocks. You have a prediction about the subvarieties this species of bug comes in. But these bugs are really hard to find. You have to turn over 10^21 rocks to find just 1,959 bugs. And you find unexpected ratios of subvarieties! The statistical significance of this unexpected result is based not on the number of rocks you turn over but on the probability your theory assigns to the distribution discovered in your sample of 1,959.
gcthomas 8y ago
The result seems to depend critically on the researchers' estimation of the neutral current of neutral pions, which if underestimated could produce the bump in the data at the low energy range observed. I think that with further experiments this result may well fade away.

Wow. 1,959 detections out of 10^21 interactions. And they talk about statistical significance. In any other field that is so close to zero you would ignore the results.

auntienomen 8y ago

Think of it this way: With 10^21 samples, you can be pretty certain that your sample mean will be the theoretical one.

yorwba 8y ago
The absolute error will be low, but the relative error can still be high. E.g. if you're dealing with events that have a frequency of 1 in 2 million, then 1 million samples can't have exactly 0.5 occurrences, so the relative error is at least 100%.

privong 8y ago

> Wow. 1,959 detections out of 10^21 interactions. And they talk about statistical significance. In any other field that is so close to zero you would ignore the results. 1959/1e21 is not the measure of the significance in the study though. That total of 1e21 interactions is split into different types of behaviors (based on theory and previous results). It's deltas on those categorized interactions and comparisons with noise/background models/characterizations that are used to assess the statistical significance of the 1959 events. I am not saying this has to be a true result and not a statistical fluke, but 1959/1e21 is not the "sigma" of this experiment.

deleted 8y ago

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mehwoot 8y ago

Would a biologist dismiss the evidence of having looked at say 100 cells in a human body because there are 10^13 of them in total? The latter number has no relevance in computing significance.

Bombthecat 8y ago

Didn't even need to read the article. When I saw the title I knew it was blown out of proportion:)

std_throwaway 8y ago

You need to compare it to the expected error rate. If you expect for example 100 detections due to noise but you get 1000 detections in the measurement, that would be pretty significant.

DFHippie 8y ago

Imagine you are investigating a bug you find under rocks. You have a prediction about the subvarieties this species of bug comes in. But these bugs are really hard to find. You have to turn over 10^21 rocks to find just 1,959 bugs. And you find unexpected ratios of subvarieties! The statistical significance of this unexpected result is based not on the number of rocks you turn over but on the probability your theory assigns to the distribution discovered in your sample of 1,959.

gcthomas 8y ago

The result seems to depend critically on the researchers' estimation of the neutral current of neutral pions, which if underestimated could produce the bump in the data at the low energy range observed. I think that with further experiments this result may well fade away.