meetonzekerheid

Meetonzekerheid is a term that appears in some Dutch-language texts to describe a form of uncertainty associated with remaining ambiguity after considering available information. It is not a standard term in mainstream statistics, epistemology, or decision theory, and its precise meaning varies by author.

Etymology and interpretation: The word seems to be a neologism formed in informal contexts, combining elements related to uncertainty. In practice, writers use meetonzekerheid to denote the irreducible or residual uncertainty that cannot be substantially reduced by additional data, models, or reasoning.

Relation to concepts and potential measures: The idea aligns with established notions such as irreducible uncertainty and residual uncertainty and is often discussed alongside aleatory versus epistemic uncertainty. In quantitative contexts, meetonzekerheid could be related to the entropy of a predictive distribution H(Y|data) or to the width of posterior intervals, representing the portion of uncertainty that remains after conditioning on evidence.

Usage and criticism: Because it lacks a clear, standardized definition, the term can be ambiguous. Many analysts prefer conventional terminology—such as residual uncertainty or irreducible uncertainty—and standard measures, to ensure clarity and comparability across studies.

See also: uncertainty, irreducible uncertainty, residual uncertainty, entropy, information theory, epistemology.