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5 Confidence Levels

Confidence levels for errors or upper limits can be specified in two ways. A simple number is interpreted as a percentage confidence level and converted into a probability from a one- tailed distribution. By adding "sigma", or any abbreviation of it to the number, the value of probability for 1 sigma (~ 68%) is multiplied by that number. For example,

    User Input       Probability
       90.0           0.1
       99             0.01
       3 sigma        1.1446e-5
       5 sigma        5.5788e-13

This input method is used for the FERL and PERL parameters.

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