this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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333
Webb finds molecule only made by living things in another world (mashable.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Webb finds molecule only made by living things in another world::undefined

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Sigma is basically a representation of certainty that your result isn’t a statistical fluke. It comes from standard deviation in statistics but 1 sigma is 68% certain. 2 sigma is 95%. 3 sigma is 99.7%.

By convention, astronomy uses 3 sigma for “significance,” meaning you almost definitely found something. Particle physics, since it’s usually done in controlled experiments, usually requires 5 sigma (99.99994%).

It’s similar to margin of error in political polls.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

All of our homies like 3 sigma.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Oh that's where 6 Sigma comes from. TIL

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why such different gaps in the metric? Nearly 30% difference between sigmas to less than 5% for the next one.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

it comes from the shape of the normal distribution (the bell curve) it goes down slowly at first then rapidly and then slowly creeping towards 0 but never getting there.