Title
A qualitative study of probability density visualization techniques in measurements
Date Issued
01 April 2015
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
review
Author(s)
Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB)
Publisher(s)
Elsevier B.V.
Abstract
Engineers find interpreting plots of a measured physical variable more straightforward than doing a formal statistical analysis. The default choice to display the data behavior is the histogram. The histogram's performance has proved to be sufficient. However, histograms have a number of limitations including sensitivity to the binwidth and a non-physical roughness. Over the past years, statisticians have developed different techniques to address these problems. These techniques provide a much clearer visualization of the probability density and a more accurate estimation of the statistical properties of the measured data. Despite their increasing use in other fields, these techniques are rarely used in the measurement community. For instance, most measurement instruments provide histograms only. This review article revisits these techniques from an engineer viewpoint to encourage its use. Different examples that include known and unknown densities result in practical guidelines that help the measurement engineer to visualize the probability content.
Start page
94
End page
111
Volume
65
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Estadísticas, Probabilidad
Ciencias de la computación
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84961358940
Source
Measurement: Journal of the International Measurement Confederation
ISSN of the container
02632241
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus