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Averaging uncertainties

Icarian · 2011-09-04 18:17:45

I have a dataset and for each time I have 4 values, and for each of those values I have an uncertainty value. If I average the 4 values, what can i do with the uncertainties. Can I state the average of those four values, the standard deviation of the mean of those four values and then give some sort of average of the…

04-09-2011 6:17pm

#1

Icarian

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Join Date: February 2006

Posts: 227

I have a dataset and for each time I have 4 values, and for each of those values I have an uncertainty value.

If I average the 4 values, what can i do with the uncertainties.

Can I state the average of those four values, the standard deviation of the mean of those four values and then give some sort of average of the uncertainties?

e.g.

N1 400 Uncertainty - 700
N2 200 Uncertainty - 350
N3 350 Uncertainty - 150
N4 150 Uncertainty - 200

0

Comments

#2 05-09-2011 10:14am

Fremen

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Join Date: May 2006

Posts: 2356

It depends what you mean by "uncertainties". The usual measure of uncertainty would be variance or standard deviation. If that's what you mean, and your numbers and uncertainties are independent of one another, then you can apply linearity of variance, as you hinted at.

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