| Article | |
| Title | Estimating the "look elsewhere effect" when searching for a signal |
| Author(s) | Vitells, Ofer (Weizmann Inst.) |
| Publication | Geneva : CERN, 2011 |
| Imprint | 2011-01-17 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| In: | Proceedings of the PHYSTAT 2011 Workshop on Statistical Issues Related to Discovery Claims in Search Experiments and Unfolding, pp.183-189 |
| DOI | 10.5170/CERN-2011-006.183 |
| Subject category | Particle Physics - Experiment ; Detectors and Experimental Techniques |
| Abstract | The "look elsewhere effect" refers to a common situation where one searchesfor a signal in some space of parameters-for example, a resonance search withunknown mass, or a search for astrophysical point sources with unknown locationin the sky. Since Wilks' theorem does not apply in such cases, one usually hasto resort to computationally expansive Monte-Carlo simulations in order tocorrectly estimate the significance of a given observation. Recent results fromthe theory of random fields provide powerful tools which may be used toalleviate this difficulty, in a wide range of applications. We review thoseresults and discuss their implementation in problems of practical interest. |
| Copyright/License | CC-BY-3.0 |
Corresponding record in: Inspire
Record created 2016-08-02, last modified 2017-07-31
