Enrollment year
2019/2020
Academic discipline
FIS/01 (EXPERIMENTAL PHYSICS)
Department
DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS
Curriculum
Fisica nucleare e subnucleare
Period
1st semester (30/09/2019 - 17/01/2020)
Lesson hours
48 lesson hours
Prerequisites
Basic notions of statistics and probability theory that are usually provided in the undergraduate Physics and Mathematics courses
Learning outcomes
Learning of the main statistical methods used in all the different physics disciplines for the interpretation, the simulation and the prediction of experimental data.
Course contents
Topics covered include: Multidimensional random variables and functions of random variables; Basic statistics (confidence intervals; estimates of probabilities; population mean and variance, correlation coefficients); Detailed treatment of the Monte Carlo methods with a discussion of its basic principles and first applications; Maximum likelihood method applied parameter estimation and hypothesis testing; Least squares method and its application to minimization (best-fit) algorithms.
Teaching methods
Lectures with the discussion and the guided resolution of specific practical problems
Reccomended or required readings
L.Lyons, Statistics for Nuclear and Particle Physics (Cambridge University Press, 1986)
A. Papoulis, Probability and Statistics, (Prentice Hal 1990)
G.Cowan, Statistical Data analysis, (Oxford University Press 2002)
Assessment methods
Oral examination. For this examination the recommendation is to mainly focus on the conceptual and logical aspects of the covered topics and on their applications to the main statistics problems in Physics and not on a detailed study of the pure mathematical derivations.
Further information
Slides of the lessons are available for students.
indications are given, mainly for students not attending the lectures, of the topics and themes to be tested in the final exam.
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