Statistical Aspects of the Discovery for the Higgs Boson at the Large Hadron Collider
Kyle Cranmer, NYU Physics

Abstract:
The standard model of particle physics is a wildly successful theory of fundamental particles and their interactions. The Higgs boson is a particle that was predicted nearly 50 years ago to address a serious theoretical consistency issue in the standard model of particle physics.  The Large Hadron Collider is a multi-national, multi-billion dollar experiment  to search for the Higgs boson and other new phenomena.  I will discuss the statistical aspects of the recent discovery of the Higgs boson, including the collaborative statistical modeling of the data and the statistical procedures we employ.  With multi-petabyte datasets and complex statistical models, we are arguably pushing a frontier of statistical analysis and quickly outstripping our most advanced tools.