Re:Tevatron confirms a 115-135 GeV Higgs
by yummybear on Wednesday March 07, 2012 @01:09PM
(#3676404)
"Confirms" is a little strong for sigma 2.2
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On the other hand, they're seeing a spike in exactly the same place that the LHC's been seeing a spike. That's good news - it means that there's new physics in there rather than just a measurement error.
Re:Tevatron confirms a 115-135 GeV Higgs
by kellenfujimoto on Wednesday March 07, 2012 @04:36PM
(#3677370)
Even so, agreement in data does not constitute proof, it's just "closer" to proof, whatever that's worth.
Not just a little strong, its bullshit... 2.2 sigma still leads to about a 4-5% chance of random error, and in particle physics that is an absolutely MASSIVE margin of error.
As people have been saying, Physicists probably won't get truly excited about this discovery until 5 sigma, or a 99.9999% confidence interval.
Articles with titles like this mislead the public and in my opinion do more harm than good because they stop people from thinking critically about whether there are flaws in the process, instead leading them to take things for given.
Re:Tevatron confirms a 115-135 GeV Higgs
by aptwebapps on Wednesday March 07, 2012 @11:58PM
(#3678630)
>Articles with titles like this mislead the public and in my opinion do more harm than good because they stop people from thinking critically about whether there are flaws in the process, instead leading them to take things for given.
I was with you up until the 'thinking critically' part. When did that start?
It looks like his argument is that somehow combining results from various detectors/measurements ends up with sigma > 3. I don't understand why that would be the case, but he isn't just saying 2.2 == confirmation.