Great, thank you. Now how do you know when the quoted error is standard deviation or instrumental precision? I would guess that an experiment that has no use being repeated (like measuring the length of a dollar bill) would feature an error due to instrumental precision, whereas an experiment...
Say that a scientist has found, using some experiment, that the acceleration due to gravity is 9.92 +or- .15 m/s^2. Is the .15 the standard deviation, or not necessarily? What else could it be?
Thanks
When coming into contact with a result such as a + or - b, what should one take the quantity 'b' as? Is it always the standard deviation? Or is it an arbitrary uncertainty decided by the scientist running the experiment, based on the equipment? Please help.
Thanks,
Andrew