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Towards A Simpler Bayesian Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement

Published

Author(s)

Raghu N. Kacker

Abstract

The impact of the Guide to Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement is spreading from the national measurement institutes to the industrial measurement laboratories. The Guide is written such that it can be loosely interpreted either from the frequentist or the Bayesian viewpoint. This paper presents a coherent interpretation of The Guide from a Bayesian viewpoint. This interpretation links The Guide with Bayesian statistics. This linkage should make the Guide more appealing to those interested in philosophical coherence. The Guide is not limited by the proposed interpretation. An immediate benefit of the Bayesian viewpoint is that it leads to a simpler and more reliable alternative to using a t-distribution with effective degrees of freedom as determined by Welch-Satterthwaite formula to account for a small number of measurements.
Citation
Measurement Science & Technology

Keywords

bayesian statistics, entropy, frequentist statistics, metrology, uncertainty

Citation

Kacker, R. (2008), Towards A Simpler Bayesian Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement, Measurement Science & Technology (Accessed April 25, 2024)
Created October 16, 2008