Detection of gross measurement errors using the grey system method

A novel method using the grey system to detect the gross errors involved in a measurement process is proposed. Although the gross errors should be avoided completely, they can occur and on many occasions are not apparent. The grey system theory is used to characterise the geometric aspects in the measurement. Theoretical analysis of the principle of gross error detection is presented and a detection criterion is proposed. An experimental test shows that the proposed method compares favourably with statistical methods which are difficult to implement when the distribution of the data is unknown and the sample size is small.