ESTIMATE ERROR USING VARIANCE

Absolute, Relative and Percentage Error

Absolute Error is the difference between the actual and measured value.
But when measuring, we don't know the actual value! So we use the maximum possible
error.
Relative Error is the Absolute Error divided by the actual measurement.
We don't know the actual measurement, so the best we can do is use the measured value:
Relative Error = Absolute Error / Measured Value
Percentage Error is the Relative Error shown as a percentage.
Example 1: A fence is measured as 12.5 meters long, accurate to 0.1 of a meter
Length = 12.5 ±0.05 m
So: Absolute Error = 0.05 m; and
Relative Error = 0.05 m/12.5 m = 0.004; and
Percentage Error = 0.4%
Example 2: The thermometer measures to the nearest 2 degrees. The temperature was
measured as 38° C
The temperature could be up to 1° either side of 38° (i.e. between 37° and 39°)
Temperature = 38 ±1°
So: Absolute Error = 1°; and
Relative Error = 1°/38° = 0.0263... ; and
Percentage Error = 2.63...%
Estimating Uncertainty in Repeated Measurements
Suppose the period of oscillation of a pendulum using a digital instrument (that you
assume is measuring accurately) and find: T = 0.44 seconds. This single measurement of the
period suggests a precision of ±0.005 s, but this instrument precision may not give a
complete sense of the uncertainty. If you repeat the measurement several times and
examine the variation among the measured values, you can get a better idea of the
uncertainty in the period. For example, here are the results of 5 measurements, in seconds:
0.46, 0.44, 0.45, 0.44, 0.41.

For this situation, the best estimate of the period is the average, or mean. Whenever
possible, repeat a measurement several times and average the results. This average is
generally the best estimate of the "true" value (unless the data set is skewed by one or more
outliers which should be examined to determine if they are bad data points that should be
omitted from the average or valid measurements that require further investigation).
Generally, the more repetitions you make of a measurement, the better this estimate will be,
but be careful to avoid wasting time taking more measurements that is necessary for the
precision required.
Consider, as another example, the measurement of the width of a piece of paper using
a meter stick. Being careful to keep the meter stick parallel to the edge of the paper (to avoid
a systematic error which would cause the measured value to be consistently higher than the
correct value), the width of the paper is measured at a number of points on the sheet, and
the values obtained are entered in a data table. Note that the last digit is only a rough
estimate, since it is difficult to read a meter stick to the nearest tenth of a millimeter (0.01
cm).

This average is the best available estimate of the width of the piece of paper, but it is
certainly not exact. We would have to average an infinite number of measurements to
approach the true mean value, and even then, we are not guaranteed that the mean value is
accurate because there is still some systematic error from the measuring tool, which can
never be calibrated perfectly. So how do we express the uncertainty in our average value?
One way to express the variation among the measurements is to use the average deviation.
This statistic tells us on average (with 50% confidence) how much the individual
measurements vary from the mean.

However, the standard deviation is the most common way to characterize the spread of
a data set. The standard deviation is always slightly greater than the average deviation, and
is used because of its association with the normal distribution that is frequently encountered
in statistical analyses.
STANDARD DEVIATION
To calculate the standard deviation for a sample of N measurement:
1. Sum all the measurements and divide by N to get the average, or mean.
2. Now, subtract this average from each of the N measurements to obtain N "deviations".
3. Square each of these N deviations and add them all up.
4. Divide this result by (N − 1) and take the square root. We can write out the formula for the
standard deviation as follows. Let the N measurements be called x 1, x2, ..., xN. Let the
average of the N values be called x.
Then each deviation is given by δxi = xi − x, for i = 1, 2,…, N.
The standard deviation is:

In our previous example, the average width x is 31.19 cm. The deviations are:
The average deviation is: d = 0.086 cm.
The standard deviation is:

The significance of the standard deviation is this: if you now make one more
measurement using the same meter stick, you can reasonably expect (with about 68%
confidence) that the new measurement will be within 0.12 cm of the estimated average of
31.19 cm. In fact, it is reasonable to use the standard deviation as the uncertainty associated
with this single new measurement. However, the uncertainty of the average value is the
standard deviation of the mean, which is always less than the standard deviation (see next
section). Consider an example where 100 measurements of a quantity were made. The
average or mean value was 10.5 and the standard deviation was s = 1.83. The figure below
is a histogram of the 100 measurements, which shows how often a certain range of values
was measured. For example, in 20 of the measurements, the value was in the range 9.5 to
10.5, and most of the readings were close to the mean value of 10.5. The standard deviation
s for this set of measurements is roughly how far from the average value most of the
readings fell. For a large enough sample, approximately 68% of the readings will be within
one standard deviation of the mean value, 95% of the readings will be in the interval x ± 2 s,
and nearly all (99.7%) of readings will lie within 3 standard deviations from the mean. The
smooth curve superimposed on the histogram is the gaussian or normal distribution
predicted by theory for measurements involving random errors. As more and more
measurements are made, the histogram will more closely follow the bell-shaped gaussian
curve, but the standard deviation of the distribution will remain approximately the same.
1. The accepted value of a measurement is the true or correct value based on general
agreement with a reliable reference.
2. The experimental value of a measurement is the value that is measured during the
experiment.
3. The error of an experiment is the difference between the experimental and accepted
values.
Error = experimental value − accepted value
4. The percent error is the absolute value of the error divided by the accepted value and
multiplied by 100%.
% Error=|experimental value − accepted value | accepted value×100%