Advanced statisitcal tools for cosmology and particle physics

por Roberto Trotta (Imperial College, London)

lunes 4 may. 2009 15:00 → 16:00 Europe/Madrid

Sala de Juntas del IFIC (Edf. Institutos de Investigación)

In the last few years, the applications of Bayesian methods to cosmology has flourished, and it is presently having a considerable impact in the particle physics community, as well. In many respects, Bayesian methods have proven to be vastly superior to more traditional statistical tools, offering the advantage of higher efficiency and of a consistent conceptual basis for dealing with the problem of induction in the presence of uncertainty. In these talks I will review Bayesian probability theory and its conceptual underpinnings, Bayes' Theorem and the role of priors. I will discuss the problemof parameter inference and its general solution, along with numerical techniques such as Monte Carlo Markov Chain methods. I will then discuss the theory and application of Bayesian model comparison, discussing the notions of Bayesian evidence and effective model complexity, and how to compute and interpret those quantities. I will also survey the status of Bayesian forecasting and experiment optimisation. Some recent applications to cosmology and supersymmetry phenomenology will also be briefly discussed. Two day Lectures: May 4-5, 2009,15:00-16:30. Sala de Juntas II del IFIC.