by Henry Zumbrun
There is a bit of a disconnect regarding risk mitigation practices in the metrology and calibration provider community. Most likely, this comes from a misunderstanding of terminology or legacy requirements that have passed from year to year without any thought of updating them to a more acceptable method of risk-based thinking. This paper examines several outdated, and to some extent wrong, practices such as Test Accuracy Ratio (TARs) and requesting NIST traceable calibrations. When compared to Test Uncertainty Ratio (TUR), which is a metrologically better approach, TAR has significant flaws.
