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Uncertainties

Shazkar ShadowstormShazkar Shadowstorm Registered User regular
edited February 2008 in Help / Advice Forum
Quick question regarding uncertainties for a lab or something...

Say I had something that was
d = [A*(B+U)]/(C+Z) where U and Z are uncertainties... do I do any rounding whatsoever until the very end? Because when I do that out, in the middle steps I end up with very high precision uncertainties... which seems somehow wrong and that I should shorten them there or something. Or do I not round anything at all till the end and keep all the precision.. and also, how should I round it to.

poo
Shazkar Shadowstorm on

Posts

  • BoutrosBoutros Registered User regular
    edited February 2008
    The error is calculated seperately and what you do is take the error associated with each individual variable and multiply it by the absolute value of the partial derivative with respect to that value. like this: avedifferential.gif

    So your total error in d would equal U*(A/C) + Z(A*B/C^2) (remember you need absolute value for the second one, so you lose the negative sign from the differentiation)

    And I think you would round only at the end to the same number of significant figures as whatever starting value had the least sig figs.

    Boutros on
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