Uncertainty

W

Thread Starter

wlady

I need help

How do I calculate the measurement of uncertainty, is it possible that you could send me documentation on this topic, as much as
possible with practical examples.
 
A

Anthony Kerstens

Please clarify uncertainty. Are you talking about
statistics, or are you needing to measure something specific.

Or are you referring to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle? :)

Anthony Kerstens P.Eng.
 
B
Dear Colleague,

The "uncertainty principle" is a parascientific rule regarding complex systems. It suggests that complex systems tend to fail to meet the expectations of their planners in "unpredictable" ways. This occurs because of the planner's failure to consider or comprehend all the subtleties of such complex processes. This
inevitably results in surprises, some pleasant, others incorrectible and disastrous.

I wrote about this principle in February's issue of Control and referred to it as "Murphy's law".

As such, the term: "measurement of uncertainty" is a contradiction, because before one can measure something, one must be aware of its existence and such things are predictable. In
contrast, unpredictability is the main characteristic of uncertainty.

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In response to Wlady's query on the subject. I don't know if the following definition will point you in the right direction, but it's a start:

"Game theory has brought into economics an uncertainty principle similar to the one
brought into physics by the quantum theory"

It came from the dust cover of the following book:

The Economics of Uncertainty
Author: Karl Henrik Borsch
Princeton University Press
Princeton, NJ
Original publishing date: 1968

Regards,
Phil Corso, PE
Trip-A-Larm Corp
 
A
Try this links page: http://www.gum.dk/e-link-gumlinks/GUMLinks.html
. It's a service of the Danish Technological Institute.

That site links to organizations like the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and its Technical Note 1297: Guidelines for
Evaluating and Expressing the Uncertainty of NIST Measurement Results. (See
http://physics.nist.gov/Pubs/guidelines/contents.html
.) There's also a link to NIST's Reference on Constants, Units, and Uncertainty at
http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/index.html .

The Danish site also has information on the GUM (Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measurement) method that seven international organizations (i.e., BIPM, IEC, IFCC, ISO, IUPAC, IUPAP and OIML) jointly publish and sell. The organizations established a Joint Committee for Guides in Metrology (JCGM) on which ILAC, the International Laboratory Accreditation
Cooperation, is now a member.

The GUM method has no formal standard number but is mostly referred to as GUM:1995. The link to its publishers is http://www.gum.dk/e-gumfaq-publishers/GUMpublishers.html .


C. Kenna Amos Jr., P.E.
Technical Editor, InTech magazine
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E

E. Douglas Jensen

I don't have time right now to respond as much as I'd like to this, and I haven't yet read the referenced article in Control.

But I have trouble with the notions that:

* principles suggest things (perhaps that's why the term "parascientific" was used);

* the phrase "in "unpredictable" ways" when "unpredicted ways" is probably more accurate (although the phrase is consistent with the
following quote, which I also disagree with);

* everything in the quotation " "measurement of uncertainty" is a contradiction, because before one can measure something, one must be aware of its existence and such things are predictable. In
contrast, unpredictability is the main characteristic of uncertainty." because it is inconsistent with the laws of physics, the principles of information and entropy, most if not all theories of probability, and the concepts of uncertainty in cognitive psychology and in decision theory.

Perhaps the Control article explains the author's novel semantics.

Doug
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