## Friday, May 8, 2015

### Abuse of Statistics - When does a Theory Fail? (Sleeping with the Fishes)

"Godfather Horse" with Last Fish Supper
In future posts I'm going to blog about reviewing the scientific literature for the criteria for the determination for new physics, the predictive precision of the theory, and various other metrics.

Really, what I am looking for is how does science determine the quality of a theory?  How well does observation match theory? Or theory match observation?

Once that is defined - how science uses sigma or other statistics to determine if new science is at play - we will then compare the way statistics is used in that case to the case how statistics are used for quality assurance in the semiconductor industry's high volume production flow well published 6 $\sigma$ program.

Really, what I am getting at is error analysis.  There is an entire combination of things that have to go into consideration when one is doing a TOTAL error analysis - all the way from the fundamental and simple absolute vs. relative measurement, and ground references, and measurement error, ""theoretical error"", PVT induced error, to other things most have never thought of...

Never a dull moment with...

The Surfer, OM-IV