# of Points | Mean error | Largest observed error |
---|
120 | 0.67% | 1.14% |
82 | 0.86% | 1.54% |
60 | 1.02% | 1.67% |
41 | 1.46% | 2.43% |
30 | 1.87% | 2.95% |
20 | 2.46% | 3.55% |
- Initial digitization involved recording >200 arbitrarily space points along the periphery of the feather. Reduction of these points to a fixed number of equally spaced points (20 to 120) along the outline inevitably produced error. This error is expressed as a percentage of the total original length of the outline. The mean error is the average over all specimens in the study; the largest observed error is the largest over all specimens. Error increases as the number of points used to approximate the curve decreases.