3 ms·
Would this really be telling us anything? Presumably, they've chosen 5-sigma for a good reason (they make so many observations?). So what would a 3-sigma resul
by yanowitz 15y ago
Would this really be telling us anything? Presumably, they've chosen 5-sigma for a good reason (they make so many observations?). So what would a 3-sigma result signify?
- GavinB 15y agoAt three or four sigmas we could be pretty sure it's true. At five sigmas we're willing to bet the next generation of scientific research on it.
- gus_massa 15y agoThe LHC has two independent detector/teams: Atlas y CMS. Each one announced last December "evidence" of the existence of the Higgs Boson with a mass near ~125GeV, with a ~3 sigma significance. This is another ~3 sigma result in the same range from a different laboratory. Combining naively the three results we get a ~sqr(3)3=~5 sigma significance. The real combination methods are more difficult, and probably involve a few Ph.D. thesis. But if someone that really knows about the subject does the calculations and get a 5 sigma result, I wouldn’t be very surprised. So another 3 sigma result in the same region is very interesting. For the official result, I think that it is difficult to combine the results of different laboratories. Each laboratory will continue to get more data and try to get it own 5 sigma result, probably next year.