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Chemistry Forums for Students => Undergraduate General Chemistry Forum => Topic started by: qbkr21 on September 26, 2008, 06:49:50 PM

Title: Lab Report
Post by: qbkr21 on September 26, 2008, 06:49:50 PM

Hi I'm in a lab where we paired off into groups and each was responsible for recording percent error of their results.  The entire class average was EXTREAMLY high.  I'm talking 55% to 105%.  Does this mean it was random or systematic error.  I was leaning to random error because were were all in the same building and conducting the same expirament.  Thanks for your help.

qbkr21

Title: Re: Lab Report
Post by: Yggdrasil on September 28, 2008, 11:21:47 AM

It's hard to say w/o knowing the details of the experiment and result.  For example, if everyone got an error that was 50% above the correct value, that would point to systemic error.  If everyone got errors that were equally distributed from -50% to +50%, I would say that the errors are more likely random.