Subatomic particles that appear to defy Standard Model

Re:Subatomic particles that appear to defy Standard Model by nitrogen on Sunday August 30, 2015 @03:18PM (#10144216)

I think you may be conflating deviation from expectation, which is just a percentage dependent on the width of the distribution, with statistical significance. An experiment with 5 std. dev. significance[0][1] could still confirm a value that is 2.1 std. dev. above the center of the range[2] that was originally predicted.

Corrections welcome.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation#Experiment.... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance#Strin... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation#/media/File...

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Re:Subatomic particles that appear to defy Standard Model by grkvlt on Monday August 31, 2015 @03:50AM (#10145896)

No, he is right. In particle physics standard deviation from the normal distribution of results is used to show that a result is significant and new (i.e. a previously unknown partcle) rather than just random noise.[1][2] The 'sigma' notation is then used to show how many standard deviations away the result is, such as in the Higgs discobery, when a '5 sigma' standard was used to confirm discovery. [3]

The references linked probably explain this a lot better than I have.

    [1] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/five-sigmawhats-that/
    [2] http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/8752/standard-deviation-in-particle-physics
    [3] http://understandinguncertainty.org/explaining-5-sigma-higgs-how-well-did-they-do

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