EXPRESSING COMPLETE MEASUREMENT RESULT

Expression of measurement result should be adapted to purpose, with basic principles of international agreement [4] in mind. To accomplish this, three levels of measurement result expression [3, 5, 6] are suggested:

LOOK : Theory : COMPLETE MEASUREMENT RESULT

H level (high level, e.g. in scientific papers, documents of top-level metrology, etc.) - measurement result should contain all relevant information which enables use, revision and reproduction of stated measurement result and its measurement uncertainty.

M level (medium level, e.g. in professional papers, industry laboratories reports etc.) - measurement result should contain the best approximation of measurand (Mi), standard uncertainty (u) and degrees of freedom when it's higher than 0:

L level (low level, e.g. in everyday routine work) - measurement result is expressed with measured value and measurement unit with such number of figures that rounding uncertainty is equal or less than one quarter of total measurement uncertainty [5,6]:

Results on L level are expressed with rounded number and measurement unit.
In practical work inconsistent and faulty rounded measurement results are too often. Measurement result expressed with too many figures has lack of clearness and it gives false impression about high accuracy, while by rounding on too few figures part of information about the measurand is lost. The problem lies in fact that there are clear mathematical rules for rounding off a number if a place value is chosen, but there is still no generally accepted method of determining the place on which measurement result should be rounded if expressed on L level. Problem solution see in DETERMINATION OF NUMBER OF SIGNIFICANTFIGURES OF MEASUREMENT RESULT EXPRESSED ON LOW-LEVEL

:: THEORY ::

measurement result
measurement uncertainty
proper expression of measurement result
determination of number of significant figures
expressing of complete measurement result

:: LITERATURE ::