ACCURACY, PRECISION AND ERRORS IN MEASUREMENT

Accuracy
- A measure of how close a measurement comes to the actual or true value of
whatever is measured.
Precision
- Measure of how close a series of measurements are to one another, irrespective of
the actual value
DETERMINING ERROR
 Accepted Value
- which is the correct value for the measurement based on reliable references
 Experimental Value
- value measured in the lab

Difference between experimental value and the accepted value is called the
ERROR
ERROR = experiment value – accepted value
Percent Error
|𝒆𝒓𝒓𝒐𝒓|
PERCENT ERROR = × 𝟏𝟎𝟎
𝒂𝒄𝒄𝒆𝒑𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒗𝒂𝒍𝒖𝒆

Acceptable error is +/-5%

> Values from -5 to 5% are acceptable
> Values less than -5% or greater than 5% must be remeasured
SIGNIFICANT FIGURES – for precision
- Smallest possible unit that could be measured
- All digits that are measured are significant

1. Non-zero digits are always significant.

2. Any zeros between two significant digits are significant.
3. A final zero or trailing zeros in the decimal portion ONLY are significant.
ERRORS IN MEASUREMENT
 Parallax error
 Calibration error
 Zero error – setting an equipment to zero first
 Damage – if device or equipment is faulty
 Limit of reading of the measurement device
TYPES OF ERROR
1. Gross Error/Illegitimate Error
- Human mistakes in reading instruments and recording and calculating
measurement results.
- Blunders resulting from mistakes in procedure
- Computational or calculational errors after the experiment
2. Systematic/Bias Error
- Offset error
- Can be reduced through calibration
- Faulty equipment
- Observer bias
- Cannot be evaluated directly from the date but can be determined by
comparison to the theory or other experiments
Major Crossmatching: 50mL Patient’s Serum + 25mL Donor Red Cells
Minor Crossmatching: 25mL Patient’s Red Cell + 50mL Donor’s Serum
Patient Control: 25mL Patient’s Red Cell+ 50mL Patient’s Serum
CLASSIFICATION OF ERRORS
a. Instrumental Error
- Inherent shortcoming in the instrument
- Due to misuse of the instruments
- Loading effects of the instruments
b. Environmental Error
- Due to conditions external to the measuring device
- May be effects of:
 Temperature
 Pressure
 Humidity
 Dust
 Vibrations or of external magnetic or electrostatic field -> caused
by alterations
c. Observational Error
- Parallax error
- Inaccurate estimate of average reading
- Wrong scale reading and wrong recording of data
- Incorrect conversion of units between consecutive reading
3. Random Error/Stochastic/Precision
- An error that causes readings to take random-like values about the mean
value
 - Effects of uncontrolled variables
- Variations of procedures
USE OF STATISTICS TO ESTIMATE RANDOM UNCERTAINTY
1. Mean – sum of measurement values divided by the number of measurements
2. Deviation – difference between a single result and the sample mean of many results
3. Standard deviation – the smaller the standard deviation the more precise the
data