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The problem of low counts in a signal plus noise model. (English) Zbl 1105.62300

Summary: Consider the model \(X=B+S\), where \(B\) and \(S\) are independent Poisson random variables with means \(\mu\) and \(\nu,\nu\) is unknown, but \(\mu\) is known. The model arises in particle physics and some recent articles have suggested conditioning on the observed bound on \(B\); that is, if \(X=n\) is observed, then the suggestion is to base inference on the conditional distribution of \(X\) given \(B\Rightarrow n\). This conditioning is non-standard in that it does not correspond to a partition of the sample space. It is examined here from the view point of decision theory and shown to lead to admissible formal Bayes procedures.

MSC:

62C10 Bayesian problems; characterization of Bayes procedures
62C15 Admissibility in statistical decision theory
62P35 Applications of statistics to physics
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