Pragmatic warrant for frequentist statistical practice: the case of high energy physics

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• 作者：Kent W. Staley
• 关键词：Higgs boson ; Statistics ; Significance testing ; p values ; Frequentism ; Pragmatism
• 刊名：Synthese
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：February 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：194
• 期：2
• 页码：355-376
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
• 刊物主题：Philosophy of Science; Epistemology; Logic; Philosophy of Language; Metaphysics;
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1573-0964
• 卷排序：194

文摘

Amidst long-running debates within the field, high energy physics (HEP) has adopted a statistical methodology that primarily employs standard frequentist techniques such as significance testing and confidence interval estimation, but incorporates Bayesian methods for limited purposes. The discovery of the Higgs boson has drawn increased attention to the statistical methods employed within HEP. Here I argue that the warrant for the practice in HEP of relying primarily on frequentist methods can best be understood as pragmatic, in the sense that statistical methods are chosen for their suitability for the practical demands of experimental HEP, rather than reflecting a commitment to a particular epistemic framework. In particular, I argue that understanding the statistical methodology of HEP through the perspective of pragmatism clarifies the role of and rationale for significance testing in the search for new phenomena such as the Higgs boson.