Using the same example from the market, the farmer could have a process in place to ensure she includes 18 strawberries in every package. The exact value is also the accepted value of a measurement that has already taken place. For example, if you guess that there are 20 total strawberries in a case from the farmer's market, that becomes your approximate value. This is the value you receive from estimating, performing your own initial calculations or other means. You may also refer to the approximate value as the estimated or experimental value. Here are the steps to calculate percent errors, along with an example involving purchasing fruit from the market: 1.

Percent error = (|approximate value - real value| / real value) x 100% How to calculate percent error Here is the formula to follow to understand your percent error: You may need to calculate percent error in any number of applications. Related: How to Calculate Margin of Error Percent error formula For example, a 3% error means your estimated value is close to the real value, while a 30% error would mean your measured value was farther away from the accepted value.Įrror can happen because of many reasons, including inaccurate measuring equipment, shaking hands or other calculation errors, like if you round numbers incorrectly. The greater the perfect error, the farther away your estimated number is from the known value, and the lower your perfect error, the closer your approximate value is to the actual value. Percent error is how large the difference is between an approximate figure and an exact value. Related: 10 Fascinating Science Careers What is percent error? In this article, we define percent error and explain how to calculate it using a formula that expresses it as a relationship between absolute and real value.

Practitioners in these fields, and other professionals who run small- or large-scale experiments or surveys, may develop a hypothesis and then test it to see how far off their idea could be from the actual result of the investigation. In science and mathematics, calculating percent error can let you know how close your estimate is to the real value of a measurement.

How to find percent error