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Evaluating Measurement Accuracy pp 155–189Cite as

Indirect Measurements

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Part of the book series: Springer Series in Measurement Science and Technology ((SSMST))

Abstract

As introduced in Chap. 1, indirect measurement is a measurement in which the value of the unknown quantity sought is calculated using measurements of other quantities related to the measurand by some known relation. These other quantities are called measurement arguments or, briefly, arguments. Among examples of indirect measurements, we can list measurement of the area of a plot of land presumed to have a rectangular shape (obtained from length measurements of the sides of the plot), measurement of wattage dissipated by a resistor under high-frequency current (obtained, e.g., by measurement of the voltage and current), measurement of temperature using a separately calibrated thermocouple and millivoltmeter and so on.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As a historical note, when I originally proposed this method long time ago, I missed this subtlety, and we computed the uncertainty of the result based on the number of virtual realizations. This led to an apparent paradox of obtaining confidence interval of the result that was 2–3 times narrower than that of the arguments. This problem forced me to reject this method until recently, when I finally resolved this issue and arrived at the solution described here. This solution first appeared in [56].

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  1. Cleveland Hts, OH, USA

    Semyon G. Rabinovich

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  1. Semyon G. Rabinovich
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Rabinovich, S.G. (2017). Indirect Measurements. In: Evaluating Measurement Accuracy. Springer Series in Measurement Science and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60125-0_5

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