Demistifying The Five-Sigma Criterion
Sunday, August 11, 2013 - 17:40
in Mathematics & Economics
A pre-emptive warning to the reader: the article below is too long to publish as a single post. I have broken it out in two installments, and will offer the second part in the course of the next week. Afterwards, I will merge the two sections into a single text for ease of reference. --- During the last few years science popularization magazines, physics blogs, and other outreach agents have been very busy, and in general successful, at explaining to the public the idea that a scientific discovery in physics research requires that an effect be found with a statistical significance exceeding five standard deviations. read more