Statistical evaluation of the observational information on and

Physics Department, High Energy Physics Division, POB 64, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland

Corresponding author: S. M. Harun-or-Rashid, hsrashid@pcu.helsinki.fi

Received: 6 February 2001
Accepted: 27 April 2001

Abstract

We undertake a critical evaluation of recent observational information on and in order to identify possible sources of systematic errors and effects of simplified statistical analyses. We combine observations for which the results have been published in the form of likelihood contours in the plane. We approximate the contours by fifth order polynomials, and we then use the maximum likelihood method to obtain joint likelihood contours for the combined data. In the choice of statistical merits we aim at minimum loss of information rather than at minimum variance. We find that , where the first error is mainly statistical and the second error is systematical. In a flat Universe we find .