The POINT-AGAPE Survey: Comparing Automated Searches of Microlensing
  Events toward M31
  Searching for microlensing in M31 using automated superpixel surveys raises a
number of difficulties which are not present in more conventional techniques.
Here we focus on the problem that the list of microlensing candidates is
sensitive to the selection criteria or "cuts" imposed and some subjectivity is
involved in this. Weakening the cuts will generate a longer list of
microlensing candidates but with a greater fraction of spurious ones;
strengthening the cuts will produce a shorter list but may exclude some genuine
events. We illustrate this by comparing three analyses of the same data-set
obtained from a 3-year observing run on the INT in La Palma. The results of two
of these analyses have been already reported: Belokurov et al. (2005) obtained
between 3 and 22 candidates, depending on the strength of their cuts, while
Calchi Novati et al. (2005) obtained 6 candidates. The third analysis is
presented here for the first time and reports 10 microlensing candidates, 7 of
which are new. Only two of the candidates are common to all three analyses. In
order to understand why these analyses produce different candidate lists, a
comparison is made of the cuts used by the three groups...
