A computer-oriented method for processing and communicating numerical data is described. The Instrument Reliability Factors (IRF), which exactly define the limits of reliability of each measured item of information, are used to compute the Maximum Permitted Error (MPE) associated with each value of each ordinate. The Self-Judgment Principle (SJP) is used to discard wrong information and to compute mean values of the parameters and their MPE's in terms of the IRF. Data compatibility tests with any number of different equations can be made quickly. Otherwise intractable problems are easily solved, and the design of many experiments is greatly simplified. The computational and mathematical techniques used to reduce bias in the SJP are discussed. Inadequacies in the statistical and graphical methods of curve fitting are noted.
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