3.1k citations · 3.7k across the 20 of their papers we have counts for
20 papers
Comment on Frank Porter, "Confidence intervals for the Poisson distribution"
Robert D. Cousins
Frank Porter has recently posted a review of "Confidence intervals for the Poisson distribution" (arXiv:2509.02852). The long, diverse history of such intervals is closely related…
PHYSTAT Informal Review: Marginalizing versus Profiling of Nuisance Parameters
Robert D. Cousins, Larry Wasserman
This is a writeup, with some elaboration, of the talks by the two authors (a physicist and a statistician) at the first PHYSTAT Informal review on January 24, 2024. We discuss Baye…
What is the likelihood function, and how is it used in particle physics?
Robert D. Cousins
Likelihood functions are ubiquitous in data analyses at the LHC and elsewhere in particle physics. Partly because "probability" and "likelihood" are virtual synonyms in everyday En…
Examples of statistical practice in elementary particle physics for comparison with Mayo's severity concept
Robert D. Cousins
The field of elementary particle physics (also known as high energy physics) has strong traditions in frequentist inference, heavily influenced by Fisher and by Neyman and Pearson.…
Comment on "Optimal prior for Bayesian inference in a constrained parameter space" by S. Hannestad and T. Tram, arXiv:1710.08899
Robert D. Cousins
The Jeffreys prior for a constrained part of a parameter space is the same as that for the unconstrained space, contrary to the assertions of Hannestad and Tram.
Lectures on Statistics in Theory: Prelude to Statistics in Practice
Robert D. Cousins
This is a writeup of lectures on "statistics" that have evolved from the initial version for the 2009 Hadron Collider Physics Summer School at CERN to versions for other venues and…
Should unfolded histograms be used to test hypotheses?
Robert D. Cousins, Samuel J. May, Yipeng Sun
In many analyses in high energy physics, attempts are made to remove the effects of detector smearing in data by techniques referred to as "unfolding" histograms, thus obtaining es…
The Jeffreys-Lindley Paradox and Discovery Criteria in High Energy Physics
Robert D. Cousins
The Jeffreys-Lindley paradox displays how the use of a p-value (or number of standard deviations z) in a frequentist hypothesis test can lead to an inference that is radically diff…
A Precision Measurement of Charm Dimuon Production in Neutrino Interactions from the NOMAD Experiment
NOMAD Collaboration
We present our new measurement of the cross-section for charm dimuon production in neutrino-iron interactions based upon the full statistics collected by the NOMAD experiment. Afte…
Negatively Biased Relevant Subsets Induced by the Most-Powerful One-Sided Upper Confidence Limits for a Bounded Physical Parameter
Robert D. Cousins
Suppose an observable x is the measured value (negative or non-negative) of a true mean mu (physically non-negative) in an experiment with a Gaussian resolution function with known…
A Measurement of Coherent Neutral Pion Production in Neutrino Neutral Current Interactions in NOMAD
C. T. Kullenberg, S. R. Mishra
We present a study of exclusive neutral pion production in neutrino-nucleus Neutral Current interactions using data from the NOMAD experiment at the CERN SPS. The data correspond t…
Frequentist Evaluation of Intervals Estimated for a Binomial Parameter and for the Ratio of Poisson Means
Robert D. Cousins, Kathryn E. Hymes, Jordan Tucker
Confidence intervals for a binomial parameter or for the ratio of Poisson means are commonly desired in high energy physics (HEP) applications such as measuring a detection efficie…
Final NOMAD results on nu_mu->nu_tau and nu_e->nu_tau oscillations including a new search for nu_tau appearance using hadronic tau decays
NOMAD Collaboration, P. Astier
Results from the nu_tau appearance search in a neutrino beam using the full NOMAD data sample are reported. A new analysis unifies all the hadronic tau decays, significantly improv…
A study of backward going and in interactions with the NOMAD detector
The NOMAD Collaboration, P. Astier
Backward proton and production has been studied in interactions with carbon nuclei. Detailed analyses of the momentum distributions, of the production rates, and of t…
Inclusive production of and mesons in charged current interactions
NOMAD Collaboration, P. Astier
The inclusive production of the meson resonances , and in neutrino-nucleus charged current interactions has been studied with the NOMAD detector…
Search for heavy neutrinos mixing with tau neutrinos
NOMAD Collaboration, P. Astier
We report on a search for heavy neutrinos ($\nus$) produced in the decay $D_s\to τ\nus$ at the SPS proton target followed by the decay $\nudecay$ in the NOMAD detector. Both decays…
Kalman Filter Track Fits and Track Breakpoint Analysis
Pierre Astier, Alessandro Cardini, Robert D. Cousins +3
We give an overview of track fitting using the Kalman filter method in the NOMAD detector at CERN, and emphasize how the wealth of by-product information can be used to analyze tra…
Search for a new gauge boson in decays
The NOMAD Collaboration, J. Altegoer et al
A search was made for a new light gauge boson which might be produced in decay from neutral pions generated by 450-GeV protons in the CERN SPS neutrino target. T…
A Unified Approach to the Classical Statistical Analysis of Small Signals
Gary J. Feldman, Robert D. Cousins
We give a classical confidence belt construction which unifies the treatment of upper confidence limits for null results and two-sided confidence intervals for non-null results. Th…
Search for the Weak Decay of an H Dibaryon
J. Belz
We have searched for a neutral dibaryon decaying via and . Our search has yielded two candidate events from which we set an upper limit on the productio…