The Statistical Procedure (Advanced)
Calculate the PDF of a test statistics X.
(in a simple counting experiment think of X as Poisson distributed n)
Is the Likelihood Ratio L(s+b)/L(s)
Given an experiment with n observed candidates
with a mass distribution for signal (s) and bg (b)
= number of candidates in channel j
S and B are the mass PDFs of the signal (s) and background (b)
(see figures) from which we calculate the PDF of X taking into account the signal and background rates.
http://wwwinfo.cern.ch/~pubxx/www/delsec/delnote/public/97_158_phys_737.ps.gz