Confidence Intervals and Upper Bounds for Small Signals in the Presence of Background Noise

Abstract

We discuss a new method for setting limits on small signals in the presence of background noise. The method is based on a combination of a two dimensional confidence region and the large sample approximation to the likelihood ratio test statistic. It automatically quotes upper limits for small signals and two-sided confidence intervals for larger samples. We show that this method gives the correct coverage and also has good power.

Document was created by Sciword V3.0, it consists of one main document (lrt.tex), eight figures (figure1.eps - figure8.eps) and one table (table.tex). Paper was revised after being accepted for publication in NIM A Paper was revised after being accepted for publication in NIM A

References in corpus (2)

• Improved Probability Method for Estimating Signal in the Presence of Background
• A new ordering principle for the classical statistical analysis of Poisson processes with background

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