Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Simple Guide for Evaluating and Expressing the Uncertainty of NIST Measurement Results

Published

Author(s)

Antonio M. Possolo

Abstract

The "Simple Guide" supplements, but does not replace NIST Technical Note 1297, whose techniques for uncertainty evaluation may continue to be used when there is no compelling reason to question their applicability and fitness for purpose, as enunciated in a grandfathering clause. The "Simple Guide" proposes widening the meaning of "measurement", characterizes measurement uncertainty probabilistically, describes measurement models and discusses their inputs, presents bottom-up and top-down approaches to uncertainty evaluation, explains how measurement uncertainty may be evaluated for measurement equations and for observation equations, and reviews ways of expressing measurement uncertainty. The "Simple Guide" includes many examples of uncertainty evaluations worked out in detail, drawn from a very diverse collection of areas of application of measurement science.
Citation
Technical Note (NIST TN) - 1900
Report Number
1900

Keywords

measurement uncertainty, measurement model, measurement equation, observation equation, top- down, bottom-up, input, output, probability distribution, statistical method, Bayesian, Monte Carlo, NIST Uncertainty Machine, bootstrap, coverage region, coverage probability.

Citation

Possolo, A. (2015), Simple Guide for Evaluating and Expressing the Uncertainty of NIST Measurement Results, Technical Note (NIST TN), National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD, [online], https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.TN.1900 (Accessed March 28, 2024)
Created November 4, 2015, Updated June 2, 2021