Phys. Rev. D 59, 113009 (1999) [6 pages]Treatment of the background error in the statistical analysis of Poisson processesReceived 25 August 1998; revised 12 January 1999; published 3 May 1999 The formalism that allows one to take into account the error σb of the expected mean background b̅ in the statistical analysis of a Poisson process with the frequentistic method is presented. It is shown that the error σb cannot be neglected if it is not much smaller than √b̅ . The resulting confidence belt is larger that the one for σb=0, leading to larger confidence intervals for the mean μ of signal events. © 1999 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.59.113009
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.59.113009
PACS:
06.20.Dk, 14.60.Pq
|
|
About | Terms and Conditions | Subscriptions | Search | Help
Use of the American Physical Society websites and journals implies that the user has read and agrees to our Terms and Conditions and any applicable Subscription Agreement. Physical Review®, Physical Review Letters®, Reviews of Modern Physics®, and Physical Review Special Topics® are trademarks of the American Physical Society.