Lecture 2:

David Glover first gave this lecture 10 Sep 1996

Measurement theory, probability distributions, error propagation and analysis

Relevant Reading:

• Chapters 1-3, Bevington
• Chapter 2, Davis
• Chapter 14, Press et al.

Table of Contents (Clicking below goes to section, clicking "GoToTOC" returns here) Last changed 13 September 2000

2.1 Measurement theory:

2.1.1 Systems of measurement (scales)

2.1.2 Precision vs accuracy

2.1.3 Systematic vs random errors

2.1.4 Significant figures and roundoff (computational)

2.1.5 Hypothesis building and testing (null, type I and II errors)

2.2 Distributions:

2.2.1 Parent vs sample distributions

2.2.2 Mean/median/mode/moments

2.2.3 Types: gaussian, poisson, student's-t, F, laurenzian

2.2.4 Standardization and Normalization

2.2.5 Robustness and chi-squared

2.2.6 Log-normal Transformations

2.3 Error propagation:

2.3.1 Standard deviation

2.3.2 General equation

2.3.3 Issues/assumptions regarding orthogonality

2.4 Basic non-parametric tests:

2.4.1 Spearman rank-order correlation (r_S)

2.4.2 Kendall's tau

2.4.3 Wilcoxon signed-rank test

2.4.4 Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA

2.4.5 Mann-Whitney rank-sum test

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