Abstract
All measurements, no matter how carefully undertaken, have errors. These errors need to be quantified so that different experiments can be compared. Results may have precision, self-consistency, and/or accuracy close to the real result. Results may have random errors and/or systemic errors to be addressed. This chapter explains the techniques for calculating and minimising the errors within an experiment as well as methods to propagate the errors when performing mathematical operations on the results.
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Note that 10. has two significant figures because of the decimal point, whilst 10 has one significant figure, and 10.0 has three.
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Gallaway, M. (2020). Errors. In: An Introduction to Observational Astrophysics. Undergraduate Lecture Notes in Physics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43551-6_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43551-6_11
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-43550-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-43551-6
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