A fast and flexible machine learning approach to data quality monitoring

Abstract

We present a machine learning based approach for real-time monitoring of particle detectors. The proposed strategy evaluates the compatibility between incoming batches of experimental data and a reference sample representing the data behavior in normal conditions by implementing a likelihood-ratio hypothesis test. The core model is powered by recent large-scale implementations of kernel methods, nonparametric learning algorithms that can approximate any continuous function given enough data. The resulting algorithm is fast, efficient and agnostic about the type of potential anomaly in the data. We show the performance of the model on multivariate data from a drift tube chambers muon detector.