negative values for physical quantities

From: slava (rspektor_at_princeton.edu)
Date: 11/17/04 

Date: 16 Nov 2004 17:05:18 -0800

Hello,
Don't know much about statistics, so I hope this problem has an easy
solution.

Let's say I have a large canister with water. Let' also say that water
leaks out of the cylinder at some unknown rate but I can estimate the
amount of water left at any point in time with an error of say +/- 10
cc. So for example, at some point I estimate to have 100 +/- 10 cc of
water left (i.e. between 90 and 110 cc), and so on...
What happens when I estimate that there is only 5 cc left? It does not
make sense to report that I have -5 to 15 cc of water left! However,
simply ignoring negative numbers does not seem right either.

Please help.
Slava

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