Better late than never? Injecting statistical know-how into legislation on water quality.
Many of the Directives we use to control the risk of water pollution do not distinguish the statistical concepts of population and sample. They also fail to acknowledge the uncertainty in estimates of summary statistics. This leads to faulty assessments of performance, some of which have serious consequences. This paper explains how calculations of compliance should be done in duplicate. First, we must follow the stipulations in the Directives. Second we must make a proper statistical estimation. The results from the second assessment show where failure is statistically significant, and where the Directives' rules preclude a good decision on the need to act.
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Quality Manager, Environment Agency, Goldhay Way, Orton Goldhay, Peterborough, UK.
D016001:Confidence Intervals; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D014876:Water Pollution / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*