Abstract
THE following statement occurs in the Dictionary of National Biography, 2 (1908), in regard to Robert Boyle's famous law : “This approximately true principle, although but loosely demonstrated, was at once generalized and accepted, and was confirmed by Mariotte in 1676” [italics mine]. From this I hoped to find in Boyle's original observations a striking application of a statistical theory of error elimination from the mathematical expression of physical laws, on which he had been working1. On reference to the original paper2 this hope was not realized, for the reason that Boyle's observations were so accurate and so conclusive as to render error elimination a work almost of supererogation. Though there are a few obvious printer's errors in the paper, the results are presented in a manner which is a model for workers in experimental science in any age.
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References
"Inherent Relations between Random Variables", Proc. Roy. Irish Acad., 47, A, 6, 63.
"Works", 1, 100 (fol. ed. 1744).
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GEARY, R. Accuracy of Boyle's Original Observations on the Pressure and Volume of a Gas. Nature 151, 476 (1943). https://doi.org/10.1038/151476a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/151476a0
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