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Many people, even professionals who use measurements regularly
have some difficulty differentiating between mistakes and random
errors when applying the concepts in practice.
Mistakes occur because of negligence, while random errors occur

due to imperfection. Negligence can be defined as either deliberate or
willful deviation from accepted practices or adopted standards or an
occurrence caused by carelessness, acting with insufficient or faulty

information, etc.
Mistakes are either deliberate, as in fraud or tampering with data,
or they occur because someone is unwilling to study, learn and
employ correct procedures, to control emotions, to keep in practice, to

focus on the task at hand, or to think. By contrast, random errors occur
naturally, even when the individual is attempting to perform the
procedure correctly.

It is true that there is a "gray area" between random errors and
mistakes. If a person is too hasty in some mechanical measuring
procedure, for example, the large random errors that occur start to

look a lot like mistakes. Since it is poor judgment to hurry in such an
instance, the results have a lot of scatter, and some might say that they
contain small mistakes. Whether they are small mistakes or large

random errors does not matter as much as knowing how to deal with
the data.
If a person observed 1,874.56 feet from a scale and recorded it as
1,874.65 feet, that is a mistake. Let us say, however, that one person

observed the reading as 1,874.56 feet and another person observed it
as 1,874.65 feet, and neither person made a mistake in either
observing or recording the numbers as they appeared to that person. If

the range of 0.09 feet is acceptable according to standards and
specifications, we can say that the difference between the readings
was caused by random errors.

Task 1. Answer the questions, using the active vocabulary.

1. What types of errors can you name?
2. Can people avoid errors?

3. Can you tell the difference between natural and instrumental
errors?
4. What are the main reasons of personal errors?
5. What is the nature of calculation errors?

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