Practical Statistics for Particle Physics

This is the write-up of a set of lectures given at the Asia Europe Pacific School of High Energy Physics in Quy Nhon, Vietnam in September 2018, to an audience of PhD students in all branches of particle physics They cover the different meanings of 'probability', particularly frequentist and Bayesian, the binomial, Poisson and Gaussian distributions, hypothesis testing, estimation, errors (including asymmetric and systematic errors) and goodness of fit. Several different methods used in setting upper limits are explained, followed by a discussion on why 5 sigma are conventionally required for a 'discovery'

Experiences of Travel and Northern Rural Landscapes in Contemporary Art

This practice based study investigates engagement with interconnecting themes of travel and rural landscape in contemporary art practice. It argues that cross-disciplinary reading and interaction between a grouping of select art practice and history of art scholarship and a grouping of select cultural geography, tourism, sociology and social anthropology scholarship, generates a richer understanding and communication of these themes in contemporary art. A review of existing scholarship reveals that there are a number of existing contemporary works of art which demonstrate engagement with interconnecting themes of travel and / or northern rural landscape. Despite this, they are yet to be presented as an identifiable, coherent, body of work of significance to the research community. Existing art historical interpretation and analysis of this work additionally fails to reference recent, relevant discourses of embodied experiences of travel and landscape which characterise much of the associated scholarship in cultural geography, tourism, sociology, and social anthropology. A combination of history of art and art practice methodology is utilised in this study to address this gap in scholarship. In the thesis, I identify and set out relevant existing scholarship in the disciplines of art practice and history of art, and those of cultural geography, tourism, sociology and social anthropology. Select examples of contemporary art are analysed and evaluated in relation to ‘wayfaring’, a theory sequentially formulated by social anthropologist Tim Ingold. Two key concepts articulated by Ingold, those of 'linear journeying' and ‘within-ness’, form the conceptual framework for this exercise. Drawing on the findings of this engagement with works by other artists, I propose an original method of ‘bridging’ as a hybrid art practice / history of art strategy for further addressing the gap in scholarship and delivering a further original contribution to knowledge. The artists’ book is identified as an effective, appropriate contemporary art medium for undertaking this bridging. I review examples of contemporary artists' book practice and explore this medium’s potential for communicating embodied experiences of linear journeying and within-ness in the context of a travel and rural landscape subject. I produced an original artists' book, 'Travelling the Line'. This work details my experiences as a hiker and artist of travelling to two particular northern rural landscapes for this study, the Scottish Highlands and Finnish Lapland. Part travel guide, part art object, 'Travelling the Line' takes the form of a hardback print book and a stand-alone, online digital platform, the latter of which includes additional video and sound content. It successfully communicates my own personal, linear, embodied act of travelling; and demonstrates the value of bringing together two bodies of scholarship, Ingold's theories and contemporary art practice. Included with this thesis is a print version of 'Travelling the Line' and an online version, accessible at https:// travellingtheline.wordpress.com

Unringing the Bell: Publicly Funded Art and the Government Speech Doctrine

This Article advances the novel argument that within the domain of removing publicly funded art from public display, the application of the Government Speech Doctrine is improper because of the current scope and policy considerations of the Doctrine, the mutable nature of art speech, and artist moral rights. As an alternative, this Article proposes a model statute legislatures should adopt that outlines an appropriate analytical framework for removing public art from public display that takes into consideration individual free speech rights, the government’s right to control its own messages, the nature of art speech, and artist moral rights

The effect of rock creep on the morphology of steep-sloped sections of the Niagara Escarpment (Ontario)

The thesis addresses the post-glacial development of the Niagara Cuesta between Hamilton and Collingwood. Conventional thinking on the escarpment during the Holocene suggests that the present morphology developed rapidly following deglaciation due to periglacial processes (Straw, 1966/Tovell 1992). The disruption of the preglacial drainage pattern by drift has meant the escarpment has not been subject to extensive fluvial action along its base, resulting in an extremely slow rate of retreat (Bird, 1980). The concept that the escarpment is a relict feature therefore pervades the modem literature. The apparent motion of the blocks at the face of the escarpment (Hintz, I997) suggests that in the absence of exogenetic processes, a slow development due to endogenetic processes has dominated the modem development of the escarpment. It has been suggested by Hewitt (1997), that the present morphology found at cliffed sections of the escarpment may be due to deformation within the shale layers. ln order to test this hypothesis, the strength properties of the rocks that form the escarpment were tested and compared to the gravitational stresses that would be experienced within the rock mass. The results indicate that both the Cabot Head Shale and the Queenston Shale possess compressive strengths that are below the principal gravitational stress expected within the escarpment. It is therefore concluded that in the absence of high confining stresses. As would be expected near the cliff face, deformation within these formations is occurring

Structured total least norm and approximate GCDs of inexact polynomials

The determination of an approximate greatest common divisor (GCD) of two inexact polynomials f=f(y) and g=g(y) arises in several applications, including signal processing and control. This approximate GCD can be obtained by computing a structured low rank approximation S*(f,g) of the Sylvester resultant matrix S(f,g). In this paper, the method of structured total least norm (STLN) is used to compute a low rank approximation of S(f,g), and it is shown that important issues that have a considerable effect on the approximate GCD have not been considered. For example, the established works only yield one matrix S*(f,g), and therefore one approximate GCD, but it is shown in this paper that a family of structured low rank approximations can be computed, each member of which yields a different approximate GCD. Examples that illustrate the importance of these and other issues are presented