Improved Probability Method for Estimating Signal in the Presence of Background

Abstract

A suggestion is made for improving the Feldman Cousins method of estimating signal counts in the presence of background. The method concentrates on finding essential information about the signal and ignoring extraneous information about background. An appropriate method is found which uses the condition that the number of background events obtained does not exceed the total number of events obtained. Several alternative approaches are explored.

Modified 12/21 for singlespace to save trees, 9 pages, 1 figure. Modified 8/11/99 to add small modifications made for the Phys. Rev. article

References in corpus (3)

• A new ordering principle for the classical statistical analysis of Poisson processes with background
• Treatment of the background error in the statistical analysis of Poisson processes
• Statistical interpretations of the null result of the KARMEN 2 experiment

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