A much enlarged second edition of Measurement Uncertainty: A Reintroduction, by Antonio Possolo (NIST) and Juris Meija (NRC Canada) was released April 6, 2022. An inter-American collaboration, the publisher is Sistema Interamericano de Metrologia (SIM) in Uruguay, with the National Resource Council of Canada (NRC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as sponsors. Additionally, members of the measurement community from institutions throughout North, Central, and South America provided materials and feedback in the creation of this edition.
Besides being a reference and instruction on measurement uncertainties, the authors mean to capture the widening influence of metrology in recent decades. As stated in the Preface, “We take an eclectic and inclusive view of measurement, recognizing its vital and pervasive role in science and technology, also in the arts.” Indeed, as detailed examples range from the interpolating of chirping crickets to calibration of the radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin. They in turn do not prescribe to rigid ideology, but instead pull from the wide range of models and methods to best address a specific need; “to select models and employ data reduction techniques that are verifiably adequate for the data in hand.”
In the span of 256 pages, the authors offer a distilled and sweeping overview of measurement uncertainties, including multiple measurement examples that can apply to a broad range of interests, coverage of statistical models and methods, and tools and references that can be found online through embedded links.
Of the uncommon pricing of the hard copy, Antonio Possolo notes “The price is not a mistake — it is a bargain the likes of which you have not seen in a long time. Look at it this way: some coffee drinks cost more than this book.” The PDF version is copyrighted by NRC and licensed under Creative Commons guidelines, making it free for individuals to download for their own use.
“Our goal is to make the book accessible to interested colleagues the world over, especially in the developing countries, and particularly in the Americas. For this reason we have opted for a black-and-white version” Possolo adds.
Measurement Uncertainty: A Reintroduction is freely available for download at https://doi.org/10.4224/1tqz-b038. A hardcopy issue is also available for $6.54 (plus shipping) from https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0660428660/.
