7. Ways of checking the quality of data

It is usually desirable that data or information is correct. There are a number of ways to help with this.

Gathering the same information from a number of sources

Relying on a single source of data makes it very dependent on that particular source. For example using a single sensor to measure rainfall at a site - what if that sensor fails?

A more reliable way is to have several sensors measuring the same thing and ensure that each are reasonably close to one another.

In a non-scientific situation such as recording the facts around a news story, it is better to get the same story from several independent sources to verify the facts.

Having a number of people check the same information

This is how science works. Any proper scientific experiment should be repeatable by other scientists. If is is not repeatable, then the results are flaky.

Another way is 'peer review'. You ask your friends, family or expert to check out the result to see if they can spot a mistake.

Using automatic tools

A good example of automatic tools are spell checking and grammar checking in a word processor. The software can usually spot simple spelling mistakes.

Of course with automatic checking, you need to be sure that the right dictionary is being used. For example an American spell checker would show that 'organise' is mis-spelt, but a British spell checker would say that it is correct.

Grammar checkers can ensure that sentences start with a a capital letter, and that mistakes such as using a word twice as in 'This is the the sentence'.