Random Errors and Systematic Errors
There are two types of measurement error, systematic error and random error.
A systematic error (an estimate of which is known as a measurement bias) is associated with the fact that a measured value contains an offset. In general, a systematic error, regarded as a quantity, is a component of error that remains constant or depends in a specific manner on some other quantity.
A random error is associated with the fact that when a measurement is repeated it will generally provide a measured value that is different from the previous value. It is random in that the next measured value cannot be predicted exactly from previous such values. (If a prediction were possible, allowance for the effect could be made.)
In general, there can be a number of contributions to each type of error.
The Performance Test Standard PTC 19.1-2005 “Test Uncertainty”, published by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), discusses systematic and random errors in considerable detail. In fact, it conceptualizes its basic uncertainty categories in these terms.
Read more about this topic: Measurement Uncertainty
Famous quotes containing the words random, errors and/or systematic:
“Man always made, and still makes, grotesque blunders in selecting and measuring forces, taken at random from the heap, but he never made a mistake in the value he set on the whole, which he symbolized as unity and worshipped as God. To this day, his attitude towards it has never changed, though science can no longer give to force a name.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“The errors of the observer come from the qualities of the human mind.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
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—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)