A common procedure when conducting physics experiments is to repeat a measurement several times to calculate the mean and standard deviation. That might be the only instruction we give to students as a means to minimize random errors. However, that technique does not guarantee that the answer will be correct. It might give the same wrong answer…

Determining the error of measurement is a necessity for researchers engaged in bench chemistry, chemistry education research (CER), and a multitude of other fields. Discussions regarding what constructs measurement error entails and how to best measure them have occurred, but the critiques about traditional measures have yielded few alternatives.…

This report, which has been prepared by Abt Associates for the Institute of Education Sciences' National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, takes an important first step in sorting out the implications of relying on state tests for general, student-level measures of reading and math achievement in evaluations of educational…

The subject of uncertainties (sometimes called errors) is traditionally taught (to first-year science undergraduates) towards the end of a course on statistics that defines probability as the limit of many trials, and discusses probability distribution functions and the Gaussian distribution. We show how to introduce students to the concepts of…

We present a fun activity that can be used to introduce students to error analysis: the M&M game. Students are told to estimate the number of individual candies plus uncertainty in a bag of M&M's. The winner is the group whose estimate brackets the actual number with the smallest uncertainty. The exercise produces enthusiastic discussions and…

Investigates minimizing errors in computational methods commonly used in chemistry. Provides a series of examples illustrating the propagation of errors, finite difference methods, and nonlinear regression analysis. Includes illustrations to explain these concepts. (MVL)