No label defined (Q4946932)

The author does not try to review all possible methods used in high energy physics (HEP), nor to make a detailed comparison between conventional and Bayesian solutions to solve the same problems. The interest is more in learning about the attitude of HEP physicists towards the fundamental aspects of probability, in which framework they make uncertainty statements, how subjective probability is perceived, and so on. The intuitive reasoning of physicists in conditions of uncertainty is closer to the Bayesian approach than to the frequentist ideas taught at universities and which is considered the reference framework for handling statistical problems. The combination of intuition and conventional statistics allows practitioners to get results which are very close, both in meaning and in numerical value, to those obtainable by Bayesian methods, at least in simple routine applications. There are, however, cases in which ``arbitrary'' probability inversions produce unacceptable or misleading results and in these conscious applications of Bayesian reasoning becomes crucial. The intention in this paper is to contribute to the debate around the question: ``Why isn't everybody a Bayesian'', recently turned into ``Why isn't every physicist a Bayesian''. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0928.00040].