3 ms·

I searched but didn't find an explanation of this 5 sigma. Any reference to share?

• vibrunazo 14y ago
  5σ = 1 / 1,744,278 chance this was just luck. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation
  • cygx 14y ago
    The question this actually answers is: Assuming it was luck (ie there's no Higgs), how likely is it to get the measured result (or one even more extreme)?
    • tszyn 14y ago
      Exactly. P(results|luck) and P(luck|results) are two very different things. We don't know the probability that the results are due to "just luck" (whatever that means).
      • Almaviva 14y ago
        I think it's quite dramatic how many very intelligent people (up to writers in major publications) are uneducated about this distinction, and how dramatically wrong decisions can be if this is misunderstood. If we could teach this, as well as correlation vs causation, I'm convinced the intelligent public would make much better decisions about many things, medicine and nutrition to name a couple.
  • raphinou 14y ago
    I know standard deviation but I didn't know scientists reported their results talking about x sigmas. Thanks for clearing that up.