Objections to the Unified Approach to the Computation of Classical Confidence Limits

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the Feldman-Cousins method for classical confidence intervals, highlighting its limitations and cases where it fails to address the fundamental issues of classical confidence limits.

Contribution

The paper demonstrates the limitations of the Feldman-Cousins approach and shows it does not resolve the core problems of classical confidence intervals in certain cases.

Findings

Feldman-Cousins method is not universally applicable.

The approach does not eliminate unphysical confidence intervals.

Classical confidence limits still have fundamental deficiencies.

Abstract

Conventional classical confidence intervals in specific cases are unphysical. A solution to this problem has recently been published by Feldman and Cousins. We show that there are cases where the new approach is not applicable and that it does not remove the basic deficiencies of classical confidence limits.