Error Analysis

The deviation between the actual measured value and the true value of the measurand
is what is regarded as error. However, this definition has limitation in that the true
value of the measurement remains unknown and cannot be exactly determined. The act
of quantifying doubt about the measured value is uncertainty. Any measurement has a
margin of doubt and this doubt should be quantified.
Basically, the measurements of any quantity say is stated as,
(Measured value of x)=

(1)
Where

is the best estimate of the quantity concerned and is the uncertainty or

error margin. From (1) the confidence of the measurement lies between the highest
probable value measured

and the lowest value

.
Absolute error
The magnitude of the physical error in a measured value. That is, the difference
between the measured and the accepted value.

| (2)
Relative error
The relative size of the error is defined as the ratio of absolute error to the accepted
value.

(3)
Expressing relative error as a percentage gives the per cent of error.
There are several sources of random and systematic errors and uncertainties. These
errors range from the incorrect measuring technique, the measuring instrument as well
as the personnel who perform the experiment. Systematic errors are usually the
difficult types of errors to identify. This is because they are the built in errors in the
measuring instruments either though design or wrongly calibration. Bias from the
person performing the experiment would also bring the errors. Repetition of the
observation wont bring out the spread of the error in measurement.
Random errors, however, leads to a spread/distribution of the results and therefore
they are easy to identify and quantify. These arise due to fluctuations of the physical
parameters with a particular statistical nature as well as from the person who is
collecting the values. These uncertainties are reduced by collecting multiple
measurements.
This is because the influence affects the results of the repeated measurement.
Standard deviation
The set of input quantities

are categorised as quantities whose uncertainty is

determined from current measurement and also as quantities whose uncertainties are
brought into measurement from other sources such as reference data.
In a nonlinear function of the input values,

the arithmetic mean of individual

observation

is computed as,

(4)
The experimental standard deviation, which is the positive square root of the variance,
is calculated from the equation (5).

(5)
Thus for n observations with as mean, then the variance is

(6)
The average value is derived from a finite number of samples n and thus this wont
be the exact mean if an infinite sample values were considered. Therefore, this mean
value has an associated uncertainty which is known as experimental standard deviation
of the mean. The experimental standard deviation of the mean is basically obtained
from the standard deviation. As shown by (7)
) =

(7)
Where n is the number of measurements contributing to the mean.
Standard uncertainty is used to express the level of confidence associated with a
particular distributed data values from a set of several measured values.
Accuracy is a measure of how close is the measured value is to the true or accepted
value which differ with precision in that precision is a measure of how reproducible a
measurement is.
Determining uncertainties and their associated magnitude is not relatively easy. There
are errors or uncertainties which are due to irregularities and natural fluctuation.
Various mathematical methods are used to estimate these uncertainties. However, in
some cases, uncertainty is estimated by assigning it a value which is half the finest value
of scale associated with the measuring instrument. Therefore, the tolerance margin of
error is within the range of plus or minus half the value of the precision of the
measuring instrument.
Propagation of errors
Measured values are used to calculate other values, such as area of a rectangle or the
power of induction machine which depends with speed and torque. Each measured
value has uncertainty associated with. Thus this should be put into consideration during
calculation.
If a calculated variable z is a function of two variables x and y, where x and y are
measured, then
z=z(x,y) (8)
With x and y having associated uncertainty of respectively, then the
propagated uncertainty, in z is,
=

(9)
When considering uncertainties, deviation from the mean is of importance, in a set of
measured valuables, deviation can be defined as

(10)