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The Strange Case Of The Monotonous Running Average

These days I am putting the finishing touches on a hybrid algorithm that optimizes a system (a...

Turning 60

Strange how time goes by. And strange I would say that, since I know time does not flow, it is...

On The Illusion Of Time And The Strange Economy Of Existence

I recently listened again to Richard Feynman explaining why the flowing of time is probably an...

RIP - Hans Jensen

Today I was saddened to hear of the passing of Hans Jensen, a physicist and former colleague in...

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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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Franco Rimondi, 1944-2011

Franco Rimondi, 1944-2011

Dec 23 2011 | comment(s)

I was saddened today upon hearing of the death of Franco Rimondi, a colleague in the CDF experiment. Franco was a professor of physics at the university of Bologna since 1980. His research in particle physics encompasses the last forty years, during which he collaborated with many experiments, starting with bubble chamber kaon decay studies in the late sixties, and then ADONE at Frascati in the seventies, and the split field magnet (SFM) at CERN. The experiment he spent most of his research career on was however probably CDF, at the Fermilab Tevatron collider.
Those Deceiving Error Bars

Those Deceiving Error Bars

Dec 22 2011 | comment(s)

Have you ever looked at a histogram with the data displayed as counts per bin in the form of points with error bars, and wondered whether those fluctuations and departures from the underlying hypothesized model (usually overimposed as a continuous line or histogram) were really significant or worth ignoring ?
The Say Of The Week - D'Agostini: Practically Everybody

The Say Of The Week - D'Agostini: Practically Everybody

Dec 19 2011 | comment(s)

"[...] practically nobody took very seriously the CDF claim (not even most
members of the collaboration, and I know several of them), while practically everybody is
now convinced that the Higgs boson has been finally caught at CERN – no matter if
the so called ‘statistical significance’ is more ore less the same in both cases"

G. D'Agostini, "Probably a discovery", arxiv:1112.3620
Using Polls To Question Evidence

Using Polls To Question Evidence

Dec 16 2011 | comment(s)

Particle physics experiments usually invest a considerable part of the time used to produce a measurement in the task of determining the corresponding uncertainty on the estimate, or -when a new effect is observed (say a quantity is measured away from zero, when zero would be the "null hypothesis", predicted by the current model)- estimating the statistical significance of the observation.
LHCb Confirms CDF Measurement Of Omega_B Mass

LHCb Confirms CDF Measurement Of Omega_B Mass

Dec 15 2011 | comment(s)

Another confirmation of correct evaluation of controversial HEP measurements awaited me just after the Higgs evidence was presented at CERN. I am sort of embarassed by this compulsory self-promotion, but this is my blog so I will excuse myself ;-)

So the story is the following... Some of you might still remember the controversy over the Omega b discovery, at the Tevatron a couple of years ago.
Eilam Gross: Higgs - The Best There Is, For Now

Eilam Gross: Higgs - The Best There Is, For Now

Dec 14 2011 | comment(s)

Eilam Gross is a professor of Physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science of Rehovot, Israel, and a distinguished member of the ATLAS collaboration. That makes him a competitor, since I work for the other experiment around the ring, CMS. But Eilam is also a colleague, especially since we are members of the Statistics Committees of our respective experiments and we cooperate in a joint group to try and converge on common practices for statistical procedures in data analysis at the LHC. Ah, and- I forgot to mention he is the convener of the ATLAS Higgs group| So I am very pleased to feature his own take on the LHC results on Higgs searches...