Dealing with Uncertainties: A Guide to Error Analysis

✍ Scribed by Manfred Drosg (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 249
• Edition: 2
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Dealing with Uncertainties is an innovative monograph that lays special emphasis on the deductive approach to uncertainties and on the shape of uncertainty distributions. This perspective has the potential for dealing with the uncertainty of a single data point and with sets of data that have different weights. It is shown that the inductive approach that is commonly used to estimate uncertainties is in fact not suitable for these two cases. The approach that is used to understand the nature of uncertainties is novel in that it is completely decoupled from measurements. Uncertainties which are the consequence of modern science provide a measure of confidence both in scientific data and in information in everyday life. Uncorrelated uncertainties and correlated uncertainties are fully covered and the weakness of using statistical weights in regression analysis is discussed. The text is abundantly illustrated with examples and includes more than 150 problems to help the reader master the subject.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages I-XIV
Introduction....Pages 1-6
Basics on Data....Pages 7-16
Basics on Uncertainties....Pages 17-48
Radioactive Decay,a Model for Random Events....Pages 49-67
Frequency and Probability Distributions....Pages 69-92
Deductive Approach to Uncertainty....Pages 93-114
Correlation....Pages 115-149
Dealing with Internal Uncertainties....Pages 151-172
Presentation and Estimation of Uncertainties....Pages 173-187
Feedback of Uncertainties on Experiment Design....Pages 189-208
Back Matter....Pages 209-235

✦ Subjects

Measurement Science, Instrumentation; Statistics for Engineering, Physics, Computer Science, Chemistry and Earth Sciences