Useful Statistics for Land Surveyors

Foreword
In earlier days when only transits and tapes were used for traversing, surveyors had
guidelines for detecting blunders in their surveys, utilizing closures in a traverse. Modern
equipment has changed accuracies obtainable to surveyors; therefore, new statistical
quantities should be used to detect possible gross errors in measurements. Some of these
statistics are discussed and simple formulas are given for their computations. It is also
shown that a closure is not to be used as a measure of accuracy, but only for detection of
possible blunders in traversing.