Saturday, July 23, 2011

"One in a million is not a fluke ..."

An interesting article on the BBC. It says that a five-sigma level of certainty is the accepted level in particle physics to claim a "discovery". Sigma here is standard deviation:
The number of sigmas (or standard deviations) is a measure of how unlikely it is that an experimental result is simply down to chance rather than a real effect.
To tag "five sigma" as certainty means that a one in a million occurrence is counted as not happening just by chance.

It would be interesting to see how that relates to the Universal Probability Bound (see where else I have discussed this here) or, for that matter, Behe'sEdge of Evolution(if at all).

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