Representative Signatures in Data Analysis - Epistemological Reflections

Session

Unfolding

15 Oct 2026, 10:10

JvF25/3-303 - Conference Room (Lamarr/RC Trust Dortmund)

13. Knowledge, Big Data, and Artificial Intelligence - From Critical to Probabilistic Rationalism

Prof. Wolfgang Rhode (TU Dortmund)

15/10/2026, 10:10

This talk explores the shift from classical critical rationalism to probabilistic rationalism in modern experimental physics. Using Plato's Cave as a metaphor, it argues that modern detectors produce probabilistically smeared shadows of underlying physical processes, making the inference from data to theory inherently non-unique. The presentation identifies three epistemological shifts in...

1. Unfolding data with AI at the LHC: Epistemological implications

Prof. Pierre-Hugues Beauchemin (Department of Physics and Astronomy, Tufts University, Department of Philosophy)

15/10/2026, 10:55

Unfolding is an inverse data transformation process that aims to correct high-level physics observable quantities obtained from a set of data for possible distortions introduced by the instrument. Unfolding is a crucial step to enable experimental outcomes to be directly comparable to theoretical predictions. Traditional unfolding methods used in experimental High Energy Physics consist in...

2. Unfolding, Systematics, and Trustworthiness

Dr Mirko Bunse (Lamarr Institute, TU Dortmund University)

15/10/2026, 11:40

Modern unfolding techniques pay special attention to
systematic effects, such as imprecisely known or varying properties of the detection process. This necessary, although fairly novel, shift towards the modeling of systematic effects corresponds to a desirable relaxation of assumptions previously imposed by the physicist, so that unfolding can represent the observed data more closely than...