Defined field for uncertainties on each axis #53
Description
Dear Matt and Bruce
I feel that we should have definitions for column fields for uncertainty (standard deviation or standard error) both for the uncertainty in mass attenuation coefficient (cm^2/g) and also for the energy.
While energy is sometimes represented as a single offset with a single energy uncertainty, ideally it maps into a field for each channel, whether in slew or step mode.
For the attenuation coefficient it is quite clear that independent uncertainties permit a more unbiased determination of quality, especially with metadata indicating methodology or provenance. It also permits strong hypothesis testing. Hope that this helps ;)
In principle I would also expect a defined column field for both attentuation and for absorption. The latter is of course more directly relevant for XAFS, but most users will not know how to extract it so the attenuation column represents more fairly the data.
Very best wishes
Chris