A student experiment on error analysis and uncertainties based on mobile--device sensors
Martin Monteiro, Cecilia Stari, Cecilia Cabeza, and Arturo C. Marti

TL;DR
This paper presents a set of laboratory experiments using mobile device sensors to teach students about measurement errors, uncertainties, and statistical analysis in physical experiments, enhancing understanding of modern technology and error concepts.
Contribution
It introduces innovative, sensor-based experiments for teaching error analysis and uncertainties, moving beyond traditional manual measurement approaches.
Findings
Students gain practical understanding of mean, standard deviation, and distributions.
Experiments demonstrate error analysis in real-world scenarios like road smoothness and photography.
Sensor data reveals fluctuations and uncertainties in everyday measurements.
Abstract
Science students must deal with the errors inherent to all physical measurements and be conscious of the necessity to express their as a best estimate and a range of uncertainty. Errors are routinely classified as statistical or systematic. Although statistical errors are usually dealt with in the first years of science studies, the typical approaches are based on performing manually repetitive observations. Here, based on data recorded with the sensors present in many mobile devices a set of laboratory experiments to teach error and uncertainties is proposed. The main aspects addressed are the physical meaning of the mean value and standard deviation, and the interpretation of histograms and distributions. Other activities focus on the intensity of the fluctuations in different situations, such as placing the device on a table or held in the hand in different ways and the number of…
Peer Reviews
No public reviews on file for this paper yet. If you reviewed it on a platform where reviews are public (OpenReview, ICLR, NeurIPS, ICML), you can paste yours below so the community can read it here.
Videos
No videos yet. Explain this paper in a talk, walkthrough, or lecture? Add one.
Taxonomy
TopicsExperimental and Theoretical Physics Studies · Experimental Learning in Engineering · Engineering Education and Pedagogy
