this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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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.
All of our homies like 3 sigma.
Oh that's where 6 Sigma comes from. TIL
Why such different gaps in the metric? Nearly 30% difference between sigmas to less than 5% for the next one.
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.
Thanks