Abstract
The estimation of the signal frequency count in the presence of background noise has been widely discussed in recent physics literature, and Mandelkern [Stat. Sci. 17, 149 (2002)] brings the central issues to the statistical community, leading in turn to extensive discussion by statisticians. The primary focus however of Mandelkern and the accompanying discussion is on the construction of a confidence interval. We argue that the likelihood function and p-value function provide a comprehensive presentation of the information available from the model and the data. This is illustrated for Gaussian and Poisson models with lower bounds for the mean parameter.
- Received 10 March 2003
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.69.033002
©2004 American Physical Society
