Formerly under the jurisdiction of Committee E01 on Analytical Chemistry for Metals, Ores, and Related Materials, this practice was withdrawn in January 2016 in accordance with section 10.6.3 of the Regulations Governing ASTM Technical Committees, which requires that standards shall be updated by the end of the eighth year since the last approval date.

This practice covers the use of terms and concepts relating to the development and evaluation of method performance in determining the chemical composition of metals and related materials. Analytical science deals with the development and use of methods for chemical composition determination of materials. Chemical analysis is the application of written analytical methods. Analytical method development consists of selecting chemical and physical systems that respond to a specific analyte in a defined suite of material types which shall have the following desirable properties: accuracy and precision. Statistics deals with the collection, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of numerical data sets. Statistical terms include: arithmetic average or mean; standard deviation; precision; B-value; total error which is the statistical sum of random and systematic errors; detection limit; interlaboratory study which is a statistically designed demonstration of the actual performance of an analytical method; analysis of variance; and repeatability and reproducibility indices.

1.1 This document covers terms and concepts used in developing and evaluating the performance of methods for determining chemical composition. Although useful with many types of methods, they are dealt with in this document in the context of chemical analysis of metals and related materials.