3 ms·
> These numbers are certainly close, but to my naive interpretation, the ranges don't overlap? As is typical, the tolerances given are sigma values for an assu
by addaon 1y ago
> These numbers are certainly close, but to my naive interpretation, the ranges don't overlap?
As is typical, the tolerances given are sigma values for an assumed normal distribution, not the width of a uniform distribution. The disagreement is less than five sigma, so (in the domain of physics) the disagreement is not considered significant enough to be a high-confidence indicator of new physics.
- suzzer99 1y agoThis wins some kind of award for most useful information packed into two sentences on HN. This is exactly what I've been wondering since this came out.
- rcxdude 1y agoThis is a big source of confusion when it comes to errors. I think most people think intuitively in terms of a 'peak-to-peak' specification of errors, i.e. range of X means that all possible values are within that range. But that's not really how statisticians think, and they tend to think in terms of standard deviation. Even if you soften the 'intuitive' view to 95% confidence range, that's about a 6x difference in terms of what the number means (assuming, optimistically, a gaussian distribution).