• Question: how do you know you work is correct by a bunch of numbers?

    Asked by salchester-dye to Julian, Heather, Helen, Hugh, Jane on 11 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Julian Onions

      Julian Onions answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Usually we plot graphs of our numbers, and get a nice curve from them.
      Then we compare the curve with results from other observations and see if they match up. If they don’t then that tells you something.
      Either you are wrong, or the data is incomplete, or there is something you haven’t factored in.
      Usually we don’t know what the “correct” answer is, but we know what it is likely to be roughly.

    • Photo: Heather Campbell

      Heather Campbell answered on 11 Nov 2014:

      Julians right, much easier to figure out if things are right from plots rather than just numbers.
      Its also good to run the same analysis on some test data where you “know” the answer, that way you can check your method is working correctly before you do it on the real data.

    • Photo: Helen Johnson

      Helen Johnson answered on 12 Nov 2014:

      We don’t ever really know if our work is right, we just have to factor in errors from all the things we know about, make our very best estimates, and compare to things other people have done to see if it looks ‘sensible’.

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