123 research outputs found
Probability, propensity and probabilities of propensities (and of probabilities)
The process of doing Science in condition of uncertainty is illustrated with
a toy experiment in which the inferential and the forecasting aspects are both
present. The fundamental aspects of probabilistic reasoning, also relevant in
real life applications, arise quite naturally and the resulting discussion
among non-ideologized, free-minded people offers an opportunity for
clarifications.Comment: Invited contribution to the proceedings MaxEnt 2016 based on the talk
given at the workshop (Ghent, Belgium, 10-15 July 2016), supplemented by work
done within the program Probability and Statistics in Forensic Science at the
Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, Cambridg
Why does the meter beat the second?
Arxiv:physics/0412078
(http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/041207
Talking about Probability, Inference and Decisions. Part 1: The Witches of Bayes
In October 2017 the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), Italy's
body for official statistics, has published the book of fairy tales Le streghe
di Bayes (The witches of Bayes) written by ISTAT staff members with the
commendable aim of introducing statistical and probabilistic reasoning to
children. In this paper the fairy tale which gives the name to the book is
analyzed in a dialog between three teachers with different background and
expertise. The outcomes are definitively discouraging, especially when the
story is compared to the appendix of the book, in which the teaching power of
every story is indeed explained (as a matter of fact, without the appendix the
fairy tale of the witches seemed to be written with the purpose of make the
'Bayesians', meant as the villagers from 'Bayes', ridiculous). In fact the
fairy tale of the witches does not contain any Bayesian reasoning, the
suggested decision strategy is simply wrong and the story does not even seem to
be easily modifiable (besides the trivial correction of the decision strategy)
in order to make it usable as a teaching tool. As it happens in real dialogues,
besides the fairy tale in question, the dialogue touches several issues somehow
related to the story and concerning probability, inference, prediction and
decision making. The present paper is an indirect response to the invitation by
the ISBA bulletin to comment on the fairy tale.Comment: 48 pages, 14 figures, in Italian, be published in Progetto Alice,
Rivista di matematica e didattic
Search for heavy neutral lepton production in K+ decays
A search for heavy neutral lepton production in K + decays using a data sample collected with a minimum
bias trigger by the NA62 experiment at CERN in 2015 is reported. Upper limits at the 10−7 to 10−6 level
are established on the elements of the extended neutrino mixing matrix |Ue4|
2 and |Uμ4|
2 for heavy
neutral lepton mass in the ranges 170–448 MeV/c2 and 250–373 MeV/c2, respectively. This improves on
the previous limits from HNL production searches over the whole mass range considered for |Ue4|2 and
above 300 MeV/c2 for |Uμ4|2
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