Measurement uncertainty

Abstract

The following fundamental concepts of measurement science have been briefly reported in this tutorial article: 1) The result of a measurement provides only incomplete knowledge of the measurand, whose true value remains unknown and unknowable; 2) The uncertainty concept plays a key role in quantifying the incompleteness of the knowledge provided by the measurement result; and 3) A measurement result can be usefully employed only if the associated uncertainty is estimated and if it can be traced back to the appertaining standard; otherwise, it is a meaningless value. This tutorial has given a short review of the present practice for expressing and estimating uncertainty in measurement, based on the definitions and prescriptions given by the GUM.