Working Group 1, "Expression of uncertainty in measurement", has the task to promote the use of the GUM and to prepare Supplements and other documents for its broad application.
One of the basic premises of the GUM approach is that it is possible to characterize the quality of a measurement by accounting for both systematic and random errors on a comparable footing, and a method is provided for doing that.
This method refines the information previously provided in an "error analysis", and puts it on a probabilistic basis through the concept of measurement uncertainty.
The VIM is the most global attempt to standardize terminology across different fields of science, legislature, commerce and trade.
There are, however, some fields of science that stick to their traditional jargon, most notably theoretical physics and mass spectrometry.