The confidence interval is the range of values around the mean that contains the true mean. It is expressed as a probability percentage. The interpretation of a 95% confidence interval, for instance, is that the statistician is 95% confident that the true mean falls within the interval. The upper and lower limits of this range are known as confidence limits. The confidence limits for the true mean are estimated from the sample's mean, the standard deviation, and the statistical factor...

An experiment often consists of more than a single step. In this case, measurements at each step give rise to uncertainty. Because the measurements occur in successive steps, the uncertainty in one step necessarily contributes to that in the subsequent step. As we perform statistical analysis on these types of experiments, we must learn to account for the propagation of uncertainty from one step to the next. The propagation of uncertainty depends on the type of arithmetic operation performed on...

Werner Heisenberg considered the limits of how accurately one can measure properties of an electron or other microscopic particles. He determined that there is a fundamental limit to how accurately one can measure both a particle’s position and its momentum simultaneously. The more accurate the measurement of the momentum of a particle is known, the less accurate the position at that time is known and vice versa. This is what is now called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. He...

The atomic mass of an element varies due to the relative ratio of its isotopes. A sample's relative proportion of oxygen isotopes influences its average atomic mass. For instance, if we were to measure the atomic mass of oxygen from a sample, the mass would be a weighted average of the isotopic masses of oxygen in that sample. Since a single sample is not likely to perfectly reflect the true atomic mass of oxygen for all the molecules of oxygen on Earth, the mass we obtain from this...

Counting is the type of measurement that is free from uncertainty, provided the number of objects being counted does not change during the process. Such measurements result in exact numbers. By counting the eggs in a carton, for instance, one can determine exactly how many eggs are there in the carton. Similarly, the numbers of defined quantities are also exact. For example, 1 foot is exactly 12 inches, 1 inch is exactly 2.54 centimeters, and 1 gram is exactly 0.001 kilograms. Quantities...