Confidence limits: what is the problem? Is there the solution?

Details Confidence limits: what is the problem? Is there the solution? Confidence limits: what is the problem? Is there the solution?

2000-02-22

arxiv.org/abs/hep-ex/0002055v1

Physics

High Energy Physics

High Energy Physics - Experiment

20 pages, 6 figures, using cernrepp.cls (included). Contribution to the Workshop on Confidence Limits, CERN, Geneva, 17-18 Jan

Scientific paper

This contribution to the debate on confidence limits focuses mostly on the case of measurements with `open likelihood', in the sense that it is defined in the text. I will show that, though a prior-free assessment of {\it confidence} is, in general, not possible, still a search result can be reported in a mostly unbiased and efficient way, which satisfies some desiderata which I believe are shared by the people interested in the subject. The simpler case of `closed likelihood' will also be treated, and I will discuss why a uniform prior on a sensible quantity is a very reasonable choice for most applications. In both cases, I think that much clarity will be achieved if we remove from scientific parlance the misleading expressions `confidence intervals' and `confidence levels'.

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