Back to the top: charting the bounds of the standard model

The top quark, the most massive member of the standard model, is unique in that it is the only known fermion with a Yukawa coupling of order one. In addition, its short lifetime provides us with the only opportunity to study a quark prior to hadronization. These advantages make it among our best probes in searches for physics beyond the standard model. At the same time, the stream of negative results in searches of specific extensions of the standard model from the LHC makes the use of effective approaches increasingly attractive. In this talk, experimental analyses where such approaches are employed will be discussed, ranging from interpretations of precise standard model measurements to direct constraints on effective operators through the use of advanced statistical methods