Efficient representations of upper limits and confidence intervals for experimental data

authored by: Vladimir Dergachev
Abstract: Upper limits and confidence intervals are a convenient way to present experimental results. With modern experiments producing more and more data, it is often necessary to reduce the volume of the results for convenient distribution. A common approach is to take a maximum over a set of upper limits, which yields an upper limit valid for the entire set. This, however, can result in significant sensitivity loss, because we discard more constraining data. In this paper, we introduce functional upper limits and confidence intervals that allow one to summarize results with a small relaxation of constraints. A toy example and an application to upper limits in all-sky continuous gravitational wave searches are worked out.
Organisation(s): Institute of Gravitation Physics
External Organisation(s): Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute)
Type: Article
Journal: Physical Review D
Volume: 110
No. of pages: 7
ISSN: 2470-0010
Publication date: 01.10.2024
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Nuclear and High Energy Physics
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2311.09911 (Access: Open)
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.110.085001 (Access: Open)

BibTeX

@article{2491fa021403494a89d813c8d6d4a33f,
title = "Efficient representations of upper limits and confidence intervals for experimental data",
abstract = "Upper limits and confidence intervals are a convenient way to present experimental results. With modern experiments producing more and more data, it is often necessary to reduce the volume of the results for convenient distribution. A common approach is to take a maximum over a set of upper limits, which yields an upper limit valid for the entire set. This, however, can result in significant sensitivity loss, because we discard more constraining data. In this paper, we introduce functional upper limits and confidence intervals that allow one to summarize results with a small relaxation of constraints. A toy example and an application to upper limits in all-sky continuous gravitational wave searches are worked out.",
author = "Vladimir Dergachev",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2024 authors. Published by the American Physical Society. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the {"}https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/{"}Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI. Open access publication funded by the Max Planck Society.",
year = "2024",
month = oct,
day = "1",
doi = "10.48550/arXiv.2311.09911",
language = "English",
volume = "110",
journal = "Physical Review D",
issn = "2470-0010",
publisher = "American Institute of Physics",
number = "8",
}