Visualizing Errors

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For any scientific measurement, accurate accounting for errors is nearly as important, if not more important, than accurate reporting of the number itself. For example, imagine that I am using some astrophysical observations to estimate the Hubble Constant, the local measurement of the expansion rate of the Universe. I know that the current literature suggests a value of around 71 (km/s)/Mpc, and I measure a value of 74 (km/s)/Mpc with my method. Are the values consistent? The only correct answer, given this information, is this: there is no way to know.

Suppose I augment this information with reported uncertainties: the current literature suggests a value of around 71 $\pm$ 2.5 (km/s)/Mpc, and my method has measured a value of 74 $\pm$ 5 (km/s)/Mpc. Now are the values consistent? That is a question that can be quantitatively answered.

In visualization of data and results, showing these errors effectively can make a plot convey much more complete information.

Basic Errorbars¶

A basic errorbar can be created with a single Matplotlib function call:

In [1]:

%matplotlib inline
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.style.use('seaborn-whitegrid')
import numpy as np

In [2]:

x = np.linspace(0, 10, 50)
dy = 0.8
y = np.sin(x) + dy * np.random.randn(50)

plt.errorbar(x, y, yerr=dy, fmt='.k');