BIRS Workshop — Systematic Effects and Nuisance Parameters in Particle Physics Data Analyses

Particle Physicists study matter at its smallest and most fundamental scale. The well-known proton, neutron and similar particles are composed of quarks. Atoms also contain electrons; together with the two heavier versions of the electron (the muon and tau), each with its associated neutrino, they make up the group of leptons. Another ingredient of the catalogue of particles is the Higgs Boson, discovered at the CERN Lab's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012. Experiments studying these and other particles require large accelerators and detectors: the circumference of the LHC is 27 km and one of the detectors to study the collisions is 25 meters high and 45 meters long. Building and running these machines is expensive, in terms of money and human effort. It is therefore important to use the best statistical techniques to extract the maximum amount of information from the hard-won data. This workshop brings together Statisticians and experimental Particle Physicists to discuss how best to achieve this.