High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Observational error is the difference between a measured value of quantity and its true value. In statistics, an error is not a "mistake". Variability is an inherent part of things being measured and of the measurement process. When either randomness or uncertainty modeled by probability theory is attributed to such errors, they are "errors" in the sense in which that term is used in statistics; see errors and residuals in statistics. Every time we repeat a measurement with a sensitive instrument, we obtain slightly different results. The common statistical model we use is that the error has two additive parts: 1. systematic error which always occurs (with the same value) when we use the instrument in the same way, and 2. random error which may vary from observation to observation.