Control error statistics
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Updated: Sep 24, 2026

Errors as a Means of Reducing Impulsive Food Choice
Published on: June 5, 2016
J R Buck1, S M Zellers, M E Opar
1Department of Industrial Engineering, The University of Iowa, Iowa City 52242, USA.
Abstract:
Control in general, and manual control in particular, are traditional topics in ergonomics. Numerous studies on these topics have focused on vehicular control or tracking, as experimenters have attempted to describe control performance in terms of control errors, typically using the 'root-mean-square' (RMS) error. The authors of this study believe that this and related statistics are not well understood by the ergonomics community and that additional or alternative performance measurements would be more appropriate as measurements of the particular criteria of concern. Accordingly, this paper shows some background of the RMS and similar statistics of control error, some new statistics, and their interrelationships. This development is intended as a guide to selection of criteria for use in tracking and manual control and their measurement.
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