AANA journal
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Safely operating life support equipment and evaluating new technology both require some basic understanding of measurement theory. Measurement errors fall into two main categories: systematic errors (predictable problems usually due to calibration) and random errors (unpredictable). These two types of errors can be quantified by experiments involving repeated measurements of standards or "true" values. ⋯ The third step is to calculate basic descriptive statistics, such as the mean and standard deviation. Finally, the data should be presented in graphic form with the differences plotted against the reference values and including numerical values for the calculated error intervals. The key idea to remember is that device evaluation and method agreement studies are based on the desire to know how much trust we should place in single measurements that may be used to make life support decisions.