[LTER-im] measurmentScale/precision - what definition? how to handle?

[Scott Chapal]

Peter McCartney <peter.mccartney at asu.edu> writes:

> One of my earlier grad student jobs in archaeology was as a crew chief on a
> project that hired local Navajo workers to do the excavation. One of my
> crew, John, would measure the dimensions of his excavated pits by holding
> the reel near one edge, pulling out a length of tape and carefully read out
> the value where the tape crossed the pit edge . He never really looked where
> the end of the tape was as he was concentrating on the reading. The
> precision of these measurements seems to me to be meters to the nearest
> centimeter - every time John pulls an arm's length of tape out, he will get
> that same reading. The accuracy (based on my rather subjective assessment of
> the length of John's left arm relative to the size pits we dug) was
> something like +/- 10 centimeters, but like Barbara's fish, tended to
> increase as the width of the pits exceeded his reach.
> 
> This doesn't contribute anything useful here

Oh, I thought you were lobbying for a heteroscedasticity element!
-- 
-Scott