Applied Statistics - Week 5

Monday the 18th - Friday the 22nd of December 2017

The following is a description of what we will go through during this week of the course. The chapter references and computer exercises are considered read, understood, and solved by the beginning of the following class, where I'll shortly go through the exercise solution.

NOTE: Friday is the deadline for the problem set AND having a subject for project 2 ready. We will by then essentially be done with curriculum, and I will not introduce anything new on Friday.

General notes, links, and comments:
  • On plots: Types of data and ways of plotting (and not plotting!)


    Monday:
    We will spend both Monday and Tuesday on a larger exercise, which illustrates the idea of separating data into catagories, and how to measure and optimise the performance of this. The data is from ATLAS testbeam data at CERN and deals with separating particles in a beam into electrons and pions, but could in principle be from any other area of research and/or business.
    The subject also brings us to one of the last (formal) lectures, which is on Bayes' Theorem. Many of you know this theorem already, but I'll try to bring a general perspective on data analysis along with it.

    Reading:
  • Barlow, chapter 7.
    Lecture(s):
  • Bayes' Theorem
    Computer Exercise(s):
  • Analysis of ATLAS testbeam data: ATLAStestbeam.py and data.
    As a courtesy, here is code doing a ROC curve calculation: MakeROCfigure.py and the resulting figure.

    Tuesday:
    We will continue with the ATLAS testbeam exercise, and I will ask you to submit some key numbers that you should have obtained from the analysis. In addition we will go through project 1, and finally I'll arrange for a Questions-and-Answers session on the problem set towards the end of class.

    Reading:
  • You should by now have read curriculum (roughly Barlow chapters 1-8).
    Lecture(s):
  • There are no more formal lectures.
    Computer Exercise(s):
  • Analysis of ATLAS testbeam data: ATLAStestbeam.py and data.

    Friday:
    There will be no formal teaching on Friday the 22nd of December, and everyone should simply make sure, that they have a subject for their project 2, which means that you should have:
  • Data ready on your computer.
  • Hypotheses that you want to test.
  • A clear mind on what your project is about.

    Reading:
  • You should by now have read curriculum (roughly Barlow chapters 1-8).
    Lecture(s):
  • There are no more formal lectures on curriculum.
    Computer Exercise(s):
  • Your project defines the exercise!
    Last updated: 13th of December 2017.