A question posed by Tony Smith in the thread of the previous post (which dealt with the choice of the bin width in histograms) triggered me to do a little work to produce a convincing answer to him.

The issue is the following. Tony got interested in a few top candidate events in a few mass distributions published by CDF and DZERO quite some time ago, which seemed to all cluster in the surroundings of 145 GeV. Could those eight candidate events (once summed across the various channels and experiments) be the signal of some resonance different from top quarks ?

Just a quick note today, on getting DIY stuff done.  Schedules are better than plans.  Just blocking out the time during which you will tackle a task is more important than figuring out how you're going to do it.

This applies to writing also.  All the proposal work and outlining won't get your book down.  Being forced to sit down and type will get your book done.

For a large project, you need to have a plan because you have multiple people involved.  Even in an Agile setup, you need a project plan.  "Agile" isn't an excuse for no planning or for laziness.  However, once that's set up, it's too easy to fall into the trap of making plans, 'to do' lists, and task orders-- and find the work has slipped past you.

If your advocacy group says Republicans are anti-science but then Democrats are also anti-science, it may instead be that your groups positions aren't really scientifically valid.  Yet conservation groups routinely say "let science be the guide" as long as 'the science' is advocacy papers they fund and write.    If you don't agree, you are accused of being against science.

Hello to the K. B. Polk 4th graders!

I enjoyed your visit to Cedar Ridge Natural Preserve.  As I told some of you, I'm a scientist and I was going out to South Texas that weekend to find some dinosaur prints.  I told your teachers I'd write a letter about my adventures, because scientists love having adventures.