Key terms: Experimental Design

Validity

A measurement is valid if it measures what it is supposed to measure.

Personal errors

Mistakes, miscalculations, and observer errors such as parallax errors.

Random errors

Unpredictable variations in measurement that affect precision.

Systematic errors

Errors that affect accuracy by consistently shifting readings from the true value.

Uncertainty

Indicates the range of values in which the true value is expected to lie.

Stakeholder

An individual, group, or organization involved in decision-making related to an environmental project.

Stakeholder values

Principles and standards that a stakeholder holds dear and that guide their actions.

Stakeholder knowledge

The information, skills, or expertise that a stakeholder possesses related to a specific environmental issue or project.

Accuracy

a measurement value that is close to the true value.

Precision

How closely the set of data points are to each other. The less variation the more precise the results are said to be.

Repeatability

The ability to extract the same/similar results if the experiment was carried out under the same conditions by the same experimenter.

Reprodicibility

The closeness of results between the original experiment and an experiment being carried out under different conditions by a different experimenter.

True value

The ideal value that would be found in the quantity was measured perfectly.

Outliers

Data points that lay outside the trend of the other data points or significantly differ from the rest of the data set.