When to believe new physics results (via Occasional Musings of a Particle Physicist)

This seems like a good day for reblogging, so try this for size. It gives instructions on when to believe stories about discoveries of exciting new physics by large consortia…

It’s an interesting piece, however it does seem to me that it gives necessary conditions for believing a result, but not sufficient ones. It’s not unknown for refereed articles to be wrong…

Here's a brief summary giving my understanding of how physics results are determined in collaborations of hundreds or thousands of physicists such as the experiments at the LHC and when to believe a new physics effect has been seen.  Someone within the collaboration from an institute (university, lab, etc.) has an idea for an analysis. A few people within the institute do some preliminary studies on existing experimental and/or simulated data to … Read More

via Occasional Musings of a Particle Physicist

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Is AV better than FPTP? (via Gowers’s Weblog)

Here’s an interesting discussion of the Alternative Vote versus First Past The Post voting systems. This is the issue to be decided at the Referendum on 5th May in case you didn’t know…

On May 5th the UK will vote in a referendum for only the second time ever. (The first time was in 1975, when we voted on whether to remain in the EU, or the Common Market as it was then called.) Now we have a chance to decide whether to retain our current voting system, misleadingly known as First Past The Post, or whether to switch to the Alternative Vote. Let me come clean straight away. Although in this post I shall try to write dispassionatel … Read More

via Gowers's Weblog