9.9: The Treatment of Experimental Error
- Page ID
- 369881
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After completing the readings and practice problems recommended in this module, you should be able to:
- Describe and give examples of the following types of error that effect physical measurements, and identify the types of errors that affect precision and those that affect accuracy.
- Gross / personal error
- Systematic error
- Random error
- Determinate error
- Indeterminate error
- Describe strategies for optimizing the accuracy of physical measurements and evaluating the precision of physical measurements.
- Identify the sources of random error in a measurement.
- Propagate error using mathematics.
- Report values and their precision in the proper form (applying the rules of significant figures to correctly indicate precision).
- 9.9.1: Characterizing Experimental Errors
- Two essential questions arise from any set of data. First, does our measure of central tendency agree with the expected result? Second, why is there so much variability in the individual results? The first of these questions addresses the accuracy of our measurements and the second addresses the precision of our measurements. In this section we consider the types of experimental errors that affect accuracy and precision.
- 9.9.9: Characterizing Experimental Errors
- Two essential questions arise from any set of data. First, does our measure of central tendency agree with the expected result? Second, why is there so much variability in the individual results? The first of these questions addresses the accuracy of our measurements and the second addresses the precision of our measurements. In this section we consider the types of experimental errors that affect accuracy and precision.
- 9.9.10: Propagation of Uncertainty
- A propagation of uncertainty allows us to estimate the uncertainty in a result from the uncertainties in the measurements used to calculate the result.