mikenoethiger / errorprop

Error propagation for physics experiments

About

Python code for doing error propagation pretty quick.

Features

• Automatic error propagation
• Compute weighted averages

Quick start

The following is an example which calculates the gravitational acceleration $g$ from pendulum period $T$ and length $l$ measurements using the following relationship:

$$ g = \frac{4\pi^2 l}{T^2} $$

Error propagation for $g$ is done automatically.

>>> from errorprop import *
>>> measurements = np.array([2.77,2.81,2.93,2.95,2.49,2.81,2.95,2.76])
>>> T = MeasuredQuantity(measurements, err_sys=0.3)
>>> print(T)
2.809 ± 0.3 ± 0.1
>>> l = Quantity(1.84, err_sys=0.7E-2, err_stat=0)
>>> print(l)
1.84 ± 0.007
>>> g = 4*np.pi**2*l/T**2
>>> print(g)
9.208 ± 2.002 ± 0.656

See tutorial.ipynb for a thorough walkthrough. You can download this repository to play around with the jupyter notebook on your computer.

How to use

1. Download the errorprop.py file and put it into the same directory as your jupyter notebook.
2. Add the following import to your notebook:

from errorprop import *

3. Start doing error propagation... ;-)

Feel free to open an issue on this repository if something's not working properly.