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Errors 2013
Errors 2013
Errors 2013
&
Writing Reports
Prof. D. Evans
October 2013
Layout of Lecture
• Part 1 Errors
– What is an experimental error/uncertainty?
– Presentation of errors
– Calculation of errors
• Part 2 Writing a physics Report/Essay
– Layout of a talk
– Abstract
– Referencing in text
– Captions for figures and Tables
– Copying text word-for-word
– List of references
What is an Experimental Error?
• Every measurement or calculation derived from
a measurement will have an uncertainty or error,
σ.
• Therefore, when we write the value of a
measurement we should also include the
uncertainty
– E.g. mass of ball, m = 29.7 ± 0.3 g
• What does this error actually mean?
– Does it mean that the mass of the ball is definitely
between 29.4g and 30g ?
• No, it doesn’t.
What is an Experimental Error?
• If I were to carry-out the experiment, to measure the ball,
a million times and plot my measured results, it might
look something like this:
• But what is the error?
• It’s the standard deviation of this plot No. of measurements
i.e. half the width of the
distribution at half its height
• As you can see, there are still quite
a large proportion of the data outside
the range 30 ± σ. σ
• Ok, but what does this error (or
uncertainty) actually mean?
30 Mass, g
What is an Experimental Error?
• The plot below is a “normal” (or Gaussian) distribution –
similar to my mass plot.
• What it shows is that about 68% of the data are within
±σ of the mean value.
• Or, put another way, nearly a third of the data are more
than 1 σ from the mean.
x
χ2) per Degree of
Chi Squared (χ
Freedom
• Most fitting programs usually return a χ2
per degree of freedom
– This is an indication of how well the data fits
the curve
– A high value means it’s not a very good fit
– A very low value means your errors are too
big (i.e. you have over estimated them)
– An ideal χ2 should be between 1 and 1.5
Chi Squared (χ2
χ) per D of F
y χ2 ~ 10,000 y
χ2 ~ 0.001
x y x
Looking good!
1 < χ2 < 5
x
Interpretation of Errors
• So, if you measure the charge of an
electron in the lab and get the results
– e = (1.42 ± 0.08) x 10-19 C
– Is this compatible with the actual value of the
electron charge: e = 1.61 x 10-19 C ?
– The difference is 0.19 x 10-19 C which is about
2.4σ from the actual value.
– A bit of a judgement call but I would usually
say two values are compatible with each other
if they are within ±3σ
σ - so, yes it is compatible.
Presentation of Errors
• So, values should also have their errors
(and units) shown but what’s the best way
to present these?
– Here’s an example from a student’s lab book:
– f = 109.3584923 Hz ± 3.48320294 Hz
– What’s wrong with this?
This adds no information as the error is 3 Hz
This adds no
useful information
Error on a+b is σa 2 + σb 2
Error on a-b is also σa 2 + σb 2
2 2
Error on ab is σa σb
ab +
a b
Error on f = anbmcl
is σf 2 nσa 2 mσb 2 2
lσc
= + +
f a b c
Error on Function of x
• f(x) is some function of x and x has an error of
σx, error on function is:
f
df σf
σf = σx
dx σx
x
f gradient
σf
σx
x
Error on function of x - examples
1
f = 2
x
df 2
σf = σx = − 3 σx and
dx x
σf 1 2 2 2 2σx
= − 3 σx = − x 3 σx = −
f f x x x
by T.O.P. Student
(Group X)