The Name "error Function"
The error function is used in measurement theory (using probability and statistics), and although its use in other branches of mathematics has nothing to do with the characterization of measurement errors, the name has stuck.
The error function is related to the cumulative distribution, the integral of the standard normal distribution (the "bell curve"), by
The error function, evaluated at for positive x values, gives the probability that a measurement, under the influence of normally distributed errors with standard deviation, has a distance less than x from the mean value. This function is used in statistics to predict behavior of any sample with respect to the population mean. This usage is similar to the Q-function, which in fact can be written in terms of the error function.
Read more about this topic: Error Function
Famous quotes containing the words the name, error and/or function:
“You remind me of a child-friend who once wrote to tell me about her sister being married. “Now I will tell you all about Bessie’s wedding.” Then came a long account of bridesmaids, and breakfast, and everything else, except the name of the bride-groom! That of course didn’t matter: the great thing was to get married somehow.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“It is the very error of the moon,
She comes more near the earth than she was wont,
And makes men mad.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Morality and its victim, the mother—what a terrible picture! Is there indeed anything more terrible, more criminal, than our glorified sacred function of motherhood?”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)