The third in this series of articles on individual aspects of the assessment of uncertainty of measurement sees Stephen MacDonald consider the common currency of standard uncertainty, and provide some examples.
So far in this series we have defined what we are measuring (the measurand)1 and identified what contributors are most influential to our overall uncertainty (modelling).2 Next, we need to collect the data, and process them. To perform uncertainty evaluation we must express all our contributors in a common currency. This currency is the standard uncertainty. Then we can evaluate their contribution to the overall uncertainty.
It is that this point that our first calculations are performed. Advanced mathematics is not required, but an overview of the concepts helps. This article will walk through the process of determining the standard uncertainty using examples of commonly encountered uncertainty sources.
By the end of this article we will have assessed a fictional assay for which we have already defined the measurand and modelled the assay according to the guidance in the first two articles.
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