Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattheww | Hacker News Reader

>That number is calculated without including info about any theory/evidence regarding the Higg's [sic] boson.

That's not true. You can see plots in the 2011 and 2012 papers that give these calculations as a function of mass. It's basically impossible to make a mass-independent calculation. (Not withstanding the fact that there's no Higgsless theory to do calculations for the background).

>As an example, I'd imagine detecting the Higg's [sic] boson at 1 eV energy levels is theoretically predicted to be even less likely than billions/trillions to one odds, therefore detector noise would be a more likely explanation for such results, despite the low p-value.

You're right, the p-value is much lower. Previous experiments have long since excluded such a low Higgs mass. Also, if the Higgs mass were so low, we probably wouldn't exist.

View on HN

1) Typos fixed.

2) "That's not true. You can see plots in the 2011 and 2012 papers that give these calculations as a function of mass."

- Can you explain what you mean via figure 1 in this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1207.7235 ?

- I don't see the relevance of calculating p-values as a function of mass to my comment

3) "Not withstanding the fact that there's no Higgsless theory to do calculations for the background"

- Then what model did they use to calculate the p-values? (I do not know the details but am fairly certain it is one where there is no Higgs boson at any given mass)

4) "Also, if the Higgs mass were so low, we probably wouldn't exist."

- Ok, but I've also read headlines like "CERN proves the universe shouldn't exist", clearly this is just because their model of the universe is wrong. I'm sure in a pinch people could come up with some kind of balancing out of whatever problems would arise from such a small Higgs mass. The point was that assuming the current theory is correct, the Higgs would be a much worse explanation than detector noise.

RE 2: What I mean is that "N-sigma" and local p-value are being used interchangeably, which you can see from this plot. There's no "number ... calculated without including info about any theory/evidence regarding the Higgs boson".

RE 3: The model used to calculate the background are unphysical in the sense that they set the Higgs production cross section to zero without changing anything else. There's no physical Higgsless theory.

RE 4: I was agreeing with you and adding some facts.

>'What I mean is that "N-sigma" and local p-value are being used interchangeably, which you can see from this plot. There's no "number ... calculated without including info about any theory/evidence regarding the Higgs boson".'

Sorry, I still don't see what information is being used that requires theory/evidence regarding the Higgs boson. Whether or not anyone knows about the Higgs boson they could be plotting p-value by mass for these experiments.

>"The model used to calculate the background are unphysical in the sense that they set the Higgs production cross section to zero without changing anything else. There's no physical Higgsless theory."

So they actually change their model to be surely false, then go on to prove the known false model they just created... is false. This is pointless.

> they could be plotting ... by mass

he was saying, the mass calculation depends on the theory about the higgs? they can't just put it on a scale :)

You may be right on that point. For some reason I was thinking they just summed up the velocities, etc from whatever hits the detector. Perhaps somewhere they assume something about the Higgs boson though.

This makes the significance testing they do even more ridiculous though. At first I thought the model of background noise was simply not providing much info about the topic of interest: the existence and mass of the Higgs.

According to what I have learned here, it is much worse. Not only are they testing a purposefully rendered false model (and taking rejection of that known-false model as evidence for the Higgs), but they are also assuming the Higgs exists (and has whatever properties you all are referring to) as part of this process. As a result, the Higgs exists either way (whether background model is rejected or not) according to this process.

Doing this test sounds pretty meaningless to me.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com