Misidentification

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Misidentification occurs when the type of an object is identified wrongly, such as a jet appearing to be an electron. Misidentified objects are also known colloquially as fakes.

In an analysis, it may be important to know the relative contamination of a selected sample of objects with misidentified objects. This ratio is colloquially called the fake rate. For instance, a sample of selected muons of which 1% are in fact electrons has an 'electron fake rate' of 1%.