Yet another example of the confusion in popular science reporting between the probability of A given B with the probability of B given A. How is this acceptable?<p><i>the Tevatron would be able to identify the Higgs with 'three-sigma' certainty. This is a statistical term that indicates the finding only has a tenth of a percent chance of being due to a random statistical fluctuation.</i><p>No no no! It <i>actually</i> means that random statistical fluctuation has a tenth of a percent chance of producing the finding!
Would this really be telling us anything? Presumably, they've chosen 5-sigma for a good reason (they make so many observations?). So what would a 3-sigma result signify?