Practical Statistics for Particle Physicists

Abstract

These three lectures provide an introduction to the main concepts of statistical data analysis useful for precision measurements and searches for new signals in High Energy Physics. The frequentist and Bayesian approaches to probability theory are introduced and, for both approaches, inference methods are presented. Hypothesis tests will be discussed, then significance and upper limit evaluation will be presented with an overview of the modern and most advanced techniques adopted for data analysis at the Large Hadron Collider.