Experimenter's Bias - Statistical Background

Statistical Background

In principle, if a measurement has a resolution of, then if the experimenter averages independent measurements the average will have a resolution of (this is the central limit theorem of statistics). This is an important experimental technique used to reduce the impact of randomness on an experiment's outcome. This requires that the measurements be statistically independent; there are several reasons why they may not be. If independence is not satisfied, then the average may not actually be a better statistic but may merely reflect the correlations among the individual measurements and their non-independent nature.

The most common cause of non-independence is systematic errors (errors affecting all measurements equally, causing the different measurements to be highly correlated, so the average is no better than any single measurement). Experimenter bias is another potential cause of non-independence.