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by mattheww 3089 days ago
RE 2: What I mean is that "N-sigma" and local p-value are being used interchangeably, which you can see from this plot. There's no "number ... calculated without including info about any theory/evidence regarding the Higgs boson".

RE 3: The model used to calculate the background are unphysical in the sense that they set the Higgs production cross section to zero without changing anything else. There's no physical Higgsless theory.

RE 4: I was agreeing with you and adding some facts.
1 comments
nonbel 3089 days ago
>'What I mean is that "N-sigma" and local p-value are being used interchangeably, which you can see from this plot. There's no "number ... calculated without including info about any theory/evidence regarding the Higgs boson".'

Sorry, I still don't see what information is being used that requires theory/evidence regarding the Higgs boson. Whether or not anyone knows about the Higgs boson they could be plotting p-value by mass for these experiments.

>"The model used to calculate the background are unphysical in the sense that they set the Higgs production cross section to zero without changing anything else. There's no physical Higgsless theory."

So they actually change their model to be surely false, then go on to prove the known false model they just created... is false. This is pointless.

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posterboy 3089 days ago
> they could be plotting ... by mass

he was saying, the mass calculation depends on the theory about the higgs? they can't just put it on a scale :)

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nonbel 3088 days ago
You may be right on that point. For some reason I was thinking they just summed up the velocities, etc from whatever hits the detector. Perhaps somewhere they assume something about the Higgs boson though.

This makes the significance testing they do even more ridiculous though. At first I thought the model of background noise was simply not providing much info about the topic of interest: the existence and mass of the Higgs.

According to what I have learned here, it is much worse. Not only are they testing a purposefully rendered false model (and taking rejection of that known-false model as evidence for the Higgs), but they are also assuming the Higgs exists (and has whatever properties you all are referring to) as part of this process. As a result, the Higgs exists either way (whether background model is rejected or not) according to this process.

Doing this test sounds pretty meaningless to me.

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