[time-nuts] I think I've become a Volt nut too.

[Mike Naruta AA8K]

Sure Chuck.  What I was talking about was a part of statistics 
that we in our gnat-hair-splitting compulsive group may forget 
about.

Let's assume that our 100,000 standards were carefully 
calibrated against THE standard.  There is a small amount of 
error in the calibration process.  Let us even assume that the 
error in the calibration process is normally distributed.

It is not impossible that for a sample of 100,000 secondary 
standards, that the errors would be all be off in the same 
direction, compared to the standard's value.

Now, granted, this would be a small probability indeed.  But it 
is possible to toss a coin fifty times and have fifty "heads". 
The smart bet is that it won't.



Chuck Harris wrote:
> That will only be true of primary standards.  Secondary standards
> must be calibrated to some "primary standard".  If all 100,000 of
> your secondary standards were calibrated to the wrong value, they
> will all have values that hover around that wrong value.
> 
> -Chuck Harris
>