Dealing with Data: Signals, Backgrounds, and Statistics

March 31, 2009

We review the basic statistical tools used by experimental high energy physicists to analyze, interpret, and present data. After an introduction on the meaning of probability, we describe approaches to hypothesis testing, interval estimation, and search procedures.

This paper is the writeup of lectures I gave in June 2008 at the Theoretical Advanced Study Institute in Elementary Particle Physics, in Boulder, CO.

It was published in “Proceedings of the 2008 Theoretical Advanced Study Institute in Elementary Particle Physics: The Dawn of the LHC Era,” University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, 2-27 June 2008, edited by T. Han, World Scientific, Singapore (2010), pp. 305-356.

Download it here.