Year
1972
Abstract
The problem of determining uncertainties on measured quantities of nuclear materials leads directly to the question of estimating the variance of a product of two or more random variables. For example, the total amount of uranium in a container is the product of a bulk measurement (weight or volume) and a concentration factor. In this paper, the unbiased estimator of the variance is derived and compared to estimators based on the Taylor series approximation of the true variance and on direct substitution into the variance formula.