You were asked to include both your standard error and your

You were asked to include both your standard error and your percent difference when formally reporting your experimental results. What do they represent? Do you feel they should be included in scientific reporting?

Solution

Normally any numerical data collected over a period of time require average to be reported.

Std error is another measure of dispersion from the average. Standard deviation represents the deviations of the experimental results from the mean. On the whole, standard deviation gives the consistency of the data and gives a measure of deviation from the mean.

Standard error is the one which is got by dividing standard error by square root of n.

Thus standard error not only gives us a measure of deviation from the mean but also the number of entries. Obviously, the more the number of entries in the sample, the less is the standard deviation. Thus it is necessary to include standard error in scientific reporting.

Percent difference is nothing but difference calculated to base 100. This also gives us a comparison between the data and the more percent difference the errors more.