The recent gravitational waves result is a stunning feat for both physics and engineering. I suspect there may be much to admire on the statistics side as well. For example, the original paper states:
Events are assigned a detection-statistic value that ranks their likelihood of being a gravitational-wave signal. The significance of a candidate event is determined by the search background—the rate at which detector noise produces events with a detection-statistic value equal to or higher than the candidate event. Estimating this background is challenging for two reasons: the detector noise is nonstationary and non-Gaussian, so its properties must be empirically determined; and it is not possible to shield the detector from gravitational waves to directly measure a signal-free background. The specific procedure used to estimate the background is slightly different for the two searches, but both use a time-shift technique: the time stamps of one detector’s data are artificially shifted by an offset that is large compared to the intersite propagation time, and a new set of events is produced based on this time-shifted data set. For instrumental noise that is uncorrelated between detectors this is an effective way to estimate the background. In this process a gravitational wave signal in one detector may coincide with time-shifted noise transients in the other detector, thereby contributing to the background estimate.
I'm seeking a more detailed description of this process geared toward a general statistics audience rather than toward a physics or highly specialized statistics audience.
I understand this is a squishy question, and if it's not appropriate for CV in its current form, I would appreciate suggestions for improving it.
