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Annals of Occupational Hygiene Advance Access originally published online on June 23, 2008
Annals of Occupational Hygiene 2008 52(6):413-417; doi:10.1093/annhyg/men034
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Occupational Hygiene Society

Measurement Uncertainty

David Bartley1,* and Göran Lidén2

1 Assistant Editor, Annals of Occupational Hygiene, 3904 Pocahontas Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45227, USA
2 Department of Applied Environmental Science, Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden

* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +1 513 652 4949; e-mail: dbartley{at}eos.net

ABSTRACT

The reporting of measurement uncertainty has recently undergone a major harmonization whereby characteristics of a measurement method obtained during establishment and application are combined componentwise. For example, the sometimes-pesky systematic error is included. A bias component of uncertainty can be often easily established as the uncertainty in the bias. However, beyond simply arriving at a value for uncertainty, meaning to this uncertainty if needed can sometimes be developed in terms of prediction confidence in uncertainty-based intervals covering what is to be measured. To this end, a link between concepts of accuracy and uncertainty is established through a simple yet accurate approximation to a random variable known as the non-central Student's t-distribution.

Without a measureless and perpetual uncertainty, the drama of human life would be destroyed. Winston Churchill

Keywords: accuracy • bias • non-central Student's t-distribution • systematic error • uncertainty

FOOTNOTES

The free full text of this article can be found in the online version of this issue.

Received May 19, 2008; in final form May 22, 2008


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