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I think you have a misunderstanding about sigma. When describing the measurement of a particular physical constant, the "standard deviation" is something that c
by penteract 5y ago
I think you have a misunderstanding about sigma.
When describing the measurement of a particular physical constant, the "standard deviation" is something that changes as we get better at making measurements. It basically means "If all our assumptions (e.g. assumptions about how good our equipment is, uncertainties about other physical constants) are correct, then it is unlikely that we would have made the measurements we did if the true value is not within 2 standard deviations of the result we got".
When a more accurate measurement is made, then "1 standard deviation" gets smaller, so we know the value better, but it's always true to say "we know the value to within a few standard deviations (given some assumptions made by experimenters)" . If it turns out the measurement was wrong by several standard deviations, then it's very likely that some assumptions were wrong.
- davrosthedalek 5y agoYou are absolutely right. For deviations beyond, say 4 or 5 sigma, it's much more probable that it's not a statistical fluke, but a systematic error. Assumption wrong, experiment wrong, theory wrong or something like that. We expect that measurements land within +-1 sigma of the true value with ~68% probability (and 95% for +-2sigma). Implicitly, we assume a Gaussian distribution (often the case to good approximation, at least for small deviations), and also that we can invert the sentence: the true value is within the error band around the measurement with that probability.