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Physical Society ColloquiumSearching for a Guaranteed Surprise: Systematic Analysis of Frontier Energy Collider DataBruce KnutesonMITThe present and near-future frontier energy collider experiments are guaranteed to extend our understanding of small-distance physics beyond the Standard Model, and the model space of possible extensions to the Standard Model is sufficiently large that we are guaranteed to be surprised by what we see.How can we search for something when we know only vaguely what we are looking for? Is there a way to perform an unbiased yet data-driven search of this rich data set? Can we quantify the "interestingness" of apparent anomalies after looking at the data? Is it possible to automate the testing of specific hypotheses against those data? Can we publish high energy collider data in a more genuinely and generally useful form, following the lead of our colleagues in astronomy and astrophysics? Algorithms that begin to automate the scientific method in the context of high energy collider physics will be described.
Friday, October 22nd 2004, 15:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, Keys Auditorium (room 112) |