{"id":535,"date":"2012-03-14T09:02:05","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T00:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/?p=535"},"modified":"2012-06-08T12:06:42","modified_gmt":"2012-06-08T03:06:42","slug":"making-better-use-of-your-time-optimizing-measurement-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/535","title":{"rendered":"Making better use of your time: optimizing measurement time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Often, especially when measuring on big facilities, you are given a limited amount of time. So when it comes to measuring the sample and the background, this limited time has to be divided between a measurement of the sample, and a measurement of the background.<\/p>\n<p>Normally, one would spend about 50% of the time on a sample, and 50% on the background, or even more time on the background &#8220;because the counts are so low&#8221; (I know, I did the same!). There must be a better way to calculate the optimum division of time!<\/p>\n<p>So me and a colleague, Samuel Tardif, spent a little bit of time jotting down some equations, and plotting the result. The result is that for large differences in the signal-to-noise ratio (c.q. sample count rate to background count rate), significant reductions in uncertainty can be obtained through better division of time for <em>any<\/em> small-angle scattering measurement.<\/p>\n<p>In the case of a Bonse-Hart camera or a step-scan small-angle scattering measurement, <em>each measurement point<\/em>\u00a0can be tuned to the optimal dwell time for the sample and background, after a quick initial scan to determine the signal-to-noise ratio at each point. Please let me know how it works for you! The calculation can be checked from this document where we wrote up the results:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/ideal_background.pdf\">ideal_background<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/optimal_ratio-eps-converted-to.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-537 alignleft\" title=\"optimal division of time between measuring the sample and the background\" src=\"http:\/\/www.lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/optimal_ratio-eps-converted-to.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"432\" height=\"324\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/optimal_ratio-eps-converted-to.png 720w, https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/optimal_ratio-eps-converted-to-300x225.png 300w, https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/optimal_ratio-eps-converted-to-140x105.png 140w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>Often, especially when measuring on big facilities, you are given a limited amount of time. So when it comes to measuring the sample and the <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/archives\/535\" title=\"Making better use of your time: optimizing measurement time\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,85],"tags":[113,237,111,112,34,114],"class_list":["post-535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-looking-into-something","tag-counting-statistics","tag-lit","tag-measurement-accuracy","tag-optimization","tag-scattering","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/optimal_ratio-eps-converted-to.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1gZ2v-8D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":541,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535\/revisions\/541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lookingatnothing.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}