Physics

A calorimeter in physics is something that measures heat. However, there are mainly two categories of such objects: ones that measure macroscopic amounts of heat, and ones that measure the heat released by subatomic particles when they smash against matter ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Feb 1 2024 - 10:57am

On Overfitting In Statistics And In Machine Learning

I recently held an accelerated course in "Statistical data analysis for fundamental science" for the Instats site. Within only 15 hours of online lectures (albeit these are full 1-hour blocks, unlike the leaky academic-style hours that last 75% o ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Feb 13 2024 - 8:30am

A New Free Tool For The Optimization Of Muon Tomography

Muon tomography is one of the most important spinoffs of fundamental research with particle detectors-if not the most important. ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Feb 21 2024 - 6:39am

Where's Tommaso?

March is here, and with it begins a season of intense travel for me- something which for some combination of reasons has become sort of a habit. First, workshops and conferences are rarely scheduled in the December-February period. Second, the Christmas va ...

Blog Post - Tommaso Dorigo - Mar 2 2024 - 10:08am

On The Utility Function Of Future Experiments

At a recent meeting of the board of editors of a journal I am an editor of, it was decided to produce a special issue (to commemorate an important anniversary). As I liked the idea I got carried away a bit, and proposed to write an article for it. ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Mar 13 2024 - 7:57am

Significance Of Counting Experiments With Background Uncertainty

In the course of Statistics for Data Analysis I give every spring to PhD students in Physics I spend some time discussing the apparently trivial problem of evaluating the significance of an excess of observed events N over expected background B. This is a ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Apr 6 2024 - 2:16am

Goodbye Peter Higgs, And Thanks For The Boson

Peter Higgs passed away yesterday, at the age of 94. The scottish physicist, a winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics together with Francois Englert, hypothesized in 1964 the existence of the most mysterious elementary particle we know of, the Higgs bos ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Apr 9 2024 - 5:56pm

Shaping The Future Of AI For Fundamental Physics

From April 30 to May 3 more than 300 researchers in fundamental physics will gather in Amsterdam for the first edition of the EUCAIF conference, an initiative supported by the APPEC, NuPecc and ECFA consortia, which is meant to structure future European re ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Apr 26 2024 - 3:42pm

Move Over- The Talk I Will Not Give

Last week I was in Amsterdam, where I attended the first European AI for Fundamental Physics conference (EUCAIF). Unfortunately I could not properly follow the works there, as in the midst of it I got grounded by a very nasty bronchial bug. Then over the ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - May 6 2024 - 9:43am

A Cool Rare Decay

By and large, particle physicists confronted with the need to awe and enthuse an audience of laypersons will have no hesitation in choosing to speak about the Higgs boson and its mysteries- undoubtedly a fascinating story that requires one to start with th ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - May 26 2024 - 3:19am