Assessing uncertainty in measurement

Abstract

In 1993 the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), in cooperation with several other international organizations, issued Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement in order to establish, and standardize for international use, a set of general rules for evaluating and expressing uncertainty in measurement. The ISO recommendation has been of concern to many statisticians because it appears to combine frequentist performance measures and indices of subjective distributions in a way that neither frequentists nor Bayesians can fully endorse. The purpose of this review of the ISO Guide is to describe the essential recommendations made in the Guide, and then to show how these recommendations can be regarded as approximate solutions to certain frequentist and Bayesian inference problems. The framework thus provided will, hopefully, allow statisticians to develop improvements to the ISO recommendations (particularly in the approximations used), and also better communicate with the physical science researchers who will be following the ISO guidelines.

Measured and modelled improvement in solar energy yield from flat plate photovoltaic systems utilizing different tracking systems and under a range of environmental conditions

“…Then using the supplied data by the manufacturer (see Table 1), as indicated above, and the propagation error technique, presented by Glesner [41], the global solar irradiance error has been estimated to be ±6%, which is usually admitted as the acceptable limit of accuracy of measurement.…”

A High Pressure Resonator Transducer with a Programmed Correction of Static Characteristics

“…Unfortunately, procedures involved in the determination of the experimental characteristics result in additional measurement inaccuracies (result spread, instrument class [12,13]). Each of the experimentally obtained measurement points of the transducer characteristic, which constitutes the model and base for algorithmic compensation, is loaded with a certain inaccuracy of measurement of pressure, frequency and temperature.…”

Measurement Uncertainty in Forensic Toxicology: Its Estimation, Reporting and Interpretation

“…(Pepe, 2003) Other qualitative and quantitative methods employ Baye's Theorem which is argued by many as a superior approach to estimating and interpreting measurement www.intechopen.com uncertainty. (Gleser, 1998, Weise and Woger, 1992, Kacker and Jones, 2003, Phillips, et.al., 1998. Space does not permit further discussion of these important and useful methods.…”