Towards properly controlled analytical measurement methods

It is of great practical importance to develop simple methods for the automatic detection ofthe controlled state of the analytical method being applied. The key point is to find quantities that greatly affect the quality of the analytical results and that can be easily estimated during the measurement process from the measured data. The signal-to-noise ratio has proved to be such a quantity in gas chromatographic methods. The statistical properties of the estimation of the signal-to-noise ratio from gas chromatographic data have been investigated. The suggested practical method for estimating the signal-to-noise ratio proved to be biased from a mathematical statistical point of view, but the bias is usually not greater than 10%. It has been shown by practical examples that the signal-to-noise ratio affects the quality of the analytical results and it is easy to estimate its value from practical data.