Posted by Erol Abit on June 22, 1999 at 14:36:45:
In Reply to: Sources of error in Carbon-14 dating? posted by Steve Price on June 22, 1999 at 12:50:01:
Dear Steve,
My knowledge about C14 technique was very few. I searched the sources on the net to have an idea on if the errors are because of its mathematics or not. I found a good page with a simple language. The link to there is at the bottom. It seems that the errors are not due to the complexity of formula. Even it is logarithmic or exponential, it is very simple for the computers available to us today. I think the measurement or sampling technique used in C14 is local sampling which may give very different results from point to point in a rug. Since the old rugs are not so homogeneous because of, for ex., smoke in a small part of the rug being analysed, the number of sampling must be chosen as many as enough in the case of old rugs. Then, the averaging the local measurements will give better results with better accuracy.
Regards,
Erol