Sudbury Neutrino Observatory

SNO Analysis Report
May $14^{\rm th}$ 2004

The tool qSigEx for Ensemble Tests

Abstract

The general ensemble test method is described in detail. The signal extraction tool qSigEx developed at Carleton is used in this analysis. The algorithm of qSigEx is fully incorporated in ROOT. The results of ensemble tests for maximum-likelihood fits are presented. The ensemble test study confirms that neglecting correlations among input variables for the computation of joint probability distribution functions leads to statistical bias. Our study also suggest that ensemble tests with large statistics reveal the systematic biases inherent with the use of binned data. The qSigEx documentation and code are available on the web via the link www.physics.carleton.ca/research/sno/anal/qsigex.

Alain Bellerive and Pierre-Luc Drouin
Department of Physics
Carleton University
Ottawa, Canada K1S 5B6

Comments to alain_bellerive@carleton.ca and pldrouin@physics.carleton.ca