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Living At The Polar Circle

Since 2022, when I got invited for a keynote talk at a Deep Learning school, I have been visiting...

Conferences Good And Bad, In A Profit-Driven Society

Nowadays researchers and scholars of all ages and specialization find themselves struggling with...

USERN: 10 Years Of Non-Profit Action Supporting Science Education And Research

The 10th congress of the USERN organization was held on November 8-10 in Campinas, Brazil. Some...

Baby Steps In The Reinforcement Learning World

I am moving some baby steps in the direction of Reinforcement Learning (RL) these days. In machine...

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Tommaso DorigoRSS Feed of this column.

Tommaso Dorigo is an experimental particle physicist, who works for the INFN at the University of Padova, and collaborates with the CMS and the SWGO experiments. He is the president of the Read More »

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More On The Alleged WW Excess From The LHC

More On The Alleged WW Excess From The LHC

Jul 28 2014 | comment(s)

This is just a short update on the saga of the anomalous excess of W-boson-pair production that the ATLAS and CMS collaborations have reported in their 7-TeV and 8-TeV proton-proton collision data. A small bit of information which I was unaware of, and which can be added to the picture.

A Useful Approximation For The Tail Of A Gaussian

A Useful Approximation For The Tail Of A Gaussian

Jul 26 2014 | comment(s)

This is just a short post to report about a useful paper I found by preparing for a talk I will be giving next week at the 3rd International Conference on New Frontiers in Physics, in the pleasant setting of the Orthodox Academy of Crete, near Kolympari.

My talk will be titled "Extraordinary Claims: the 0.000029% Solution", making reference to the 5-sigma "discovery threshold" that has become a well-known standard for reporting the observation of new effects or particles in high-energy physics and astrophysics.
True And False Discoveries: How To Tell Them Apart

True And False Discoveries: How To Tell Them Apart

Jul 22 2014 | comment(s)

Many new particles and other new physics signals claimed in the last twenty years were later proven to be spurious effects, due to background fluctuations or unknown sources of systematic error. The list is long, unfortunately - and longer than the list of particles and effects that were confirmed to be true by subsequent more detailed or more statistically-rich analysis.
The SUSY-Inspiring LHC WW Excess May Be Due To Theoretical Errors

The SUSY-Inspiring LHC WW Excess May Be Due To Theoretical Errors

Jul 18 2014 | comment(s)

A timely article discussing the hot topic of the production rate of pairs of vector bosons in proton-proton collisions has appeared on the Cornell arxiv yesterday. As you might know, both the ATLAS and CMS collaborations, who study the 8-TeV (and soon 13-TeV) proton-proton collisions delivered by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, have recently reported an excess of events with two W bosons. The matter is discussed in a recent article here.
The Spam Of Physicists' Mailboxes

The Spam Of Physicists' Mailboxes

Jul 15 2014 | comment(s)

I guess every profession has its own kind of personalized spam. Here is a couple of recent samples from my own:

  • From a Fermilab address: "According to the TRAIN database training for course FN000508 / CR - Workplace Violence and Active Shooter/Active Threat Awareness Training expired on 07/01/2014. Please make arrangements to take this class. If this training is no longer required then you or your supervisor should complete the Individual Training Needs Assessment [...]"
Note that
(1) I am not a user any longer, so their database is at fault. They still send out these notifications anyway.
Self Quote Of The Week: Why You Can't Weigh Quarks Directly

Self Quote Of The Week: Why You Can't Weigh Quarks Directly

Jul 11 2014 | comment(s)

In the process of revising a chapter of my book, I found a clip I would like to share here, as it contains an analogy I cooked up and which I find nice enough to be proud of. Well, two analogies, as you'll soon find out; here I am speaking of the cat weighing trouble at the end of the piece - the other is quite trivial.
The topic is the widely different masses of fermions, the building blocks of our universe, and the trouble in making sense of it and of measuring precisely their values. Comments welcome!