Abstract

'Report on the CERN and FNAL Workshops on Confidence Limits'

by Dr.Louis Lyons

An increasingly common activity in the field of High Energy Physics is the
setting of limits on unobserved phenomena. Examples include searches for the
Higgs, B_s mixing, Physics beyond the Standard Model, dark matter, etc., as 
well as measurements of the mass of the electron-neutrino and accelerator 
experiments on neutrino oscillations.

Workshops were recently held at CERN and FNAL, devoted to setting confidence 
limits in difficult cases. Several different approaches (Bayesian; 
Feldman-Cousins and modifications thereof; CL_s method for Higgs searches) 
were discussed. There were also talks on specific analyses, as well as a 
concluding Panel discussion.

This seminar will review these Workshops. Topics will include:
      What is the problem?
      Frequentist and Bayesian approaches
      Application to simple problems
      More realsitic examples
      Where does this leave us?

e-mail contact: hisho@icepp.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp,