Sources of Error



What causes errors to be made? Gremlins are possible, and I don't trust any form of beurocracy, but as neither really entered into this experiment much, we are forced to look elsewhere.

The most common, therefore the most likely source of error was in reading the measurements. The measuring devices can only be held to limited precision, and my eye is not capable of picking up certain degrees of difference that border on minutia. However these minute differences can sometimes have a great impact on the measurements.

It is also possible that error could have come from the way that the microphone picked up the sound. It does tend to distort the sounds, thereby making the error both likely and actually probable.

The only other thing that I can come up with was in the way that the overtones were displayed. It was exceedingly difficult to read the measurements made in the poor sound experiments. The sources of error were difficult to pinpoint in this experiment because I couldn't even tell where the errors were, or even if there were any. However, in any responsible lab report a full error analysis is necessary.

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