Re:LHC physicists embrace brute-force approach to particle hunt
by godelski on Wednesday August 15, 2018 @09:41AM
(#17765930)
This is a good question! It really depends how you're smashing the protons together.
Did you create a model and then smash them together and analyze them? So you are testing "I believe that if I smash protons at X energy level that they will cause y_0,...,y_n decays" This is standard hypothesis testing. You are looking in a specific place.
A brute force method in this area is more like "Well... I'm not really sure. Why don't we just smash these protons together at uhhh... idk X energy?" And then you get "well that was interesting" or "okay, that was expected".
This is overly simplified. Basically a brute force method is just doing and observing. Not really predicting things. You're searching a large solution space and so you just try random things and hope you get lucky. (they have some good guesses of areas too look, so it isn't completely in the dark)
Did you create a model and then smash them together and analyze them? So you are testing "I believe that if I smash protons at X energy level that they will cause y_0,...,y_n decays" This is standard hypothesis testing. You are looking in a specific place.
A brute force method in this area is more like "Well... I'm not really sure. Why don't we just smash these protons together at uhhh... idk X energy?" And then you get "well that was interesting" or "okay, that was expected".
This is overly simplified. Basically a brute force method is just doing and observing. Not really predicting things. You're searching a large solution space and so you just try random things and hope you get lucky. (they have some good guesses of areas too look, so it isn't completely in the dark)