Statistical Analysis of Rounded Data: Measurement Errors vs Rounding Errors

Resumo

Since data for statistical analysis are always given in a discretized form, observations contain not only measurement errors but also rounding errors which are determined by the discretization step. In this paper we consider situations where the rounding errors are considerable: they are comparable to or even greater (in average) than the measurement errors. It is shown that it can be reasonable to increase the measurement errors in order to reduce the error of the final result.