Managing Many Simultaneous Systematic Uncertainties

TL;DR

This paper discusses the challenges of managing numerous systematic uncertainties in high-energy physics measurements, especially at the LHC, and explores potential improvements in analysis infrastructure and software tools like RooStats.

Contribution

It highlights practical issues in handling multiple systematic uncertainties and proposes ideas for improving analysis management in high-energy physics.

Findings

Identifies complexities in managing many nuisance parameters.

Discusses limitations of current analysis tools like RooStats.

Suggests potential improvements for future software implementations.

Abstract

Recent statistical evaluations for High-Energy Physics measurements, in particular those at the Large Hadron Collider, require careful evaluation of many sources of systematic uncertainties at the same time. While the fundamental aspects of the statistical treatment are now consolidated, both using a frequentist or a Bayesian approach, the management of many sources of uncertainties and their corresponding nuisance parameters in analyses that combine multiple control regions and decay channels, in practice, may pose challenging implementation issues, that make the analysis infrastructure complex and hard to manage, eventually resulting in simplifications in the treatment of systematics, and in limitations to the result interpretation. Typical cases will be discussed, having in mind the most popular implementation tool, RooStats, with possible ideas about improving the management of such cases in future software implementations.