Confidence Level Computation for Combining Searches with Small Statistics

1999/02/05 by Thomas Junk · 18 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #hep-ex #physics.data-an

paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/s0168-9002(99)00498-2

published as Nucl.Instrum.Meth.A434:435-443,1999 · 17 pages, 2 figures, LaTeX, program available at http://home.cern.ch/~thomasj/searchlimits/ecl.html one replacement to fix a typo in a URL

arxiv created 1999/02/05 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30

Abstract

This article describes an efficient procedure for computing approximate confidence levels for searches for new particles where the expected signal and background levels are small enough to require the use of Poisson statistics. The results of many independent searches for the same particle may be combined easily, regardless of the discriminating variables which may be measured for the candidate events. The effects of systematic uncertainty in the signal and background models are incorporated in the confidence levels. The procedure described allows efficient computation of expected confidence levels.

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