I am doing a biology practical report and I know that drawing a line of best fit can reduce random errors, but I'm just wondering how?
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It doesn't reduce random errors. Random errors happened and show themselves evident in the results. What a line of best fit does is show the general trend of the data. It instead limits the EFFECTS of random error. It excludes the severity of these errors to give you a most clear trend in which you can define to your theory.
Hope that makes sense
Hope that makes sense
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By definition the line of best fit is the line which minimizes errors (or a metric function of errors). It is actually computed by a process which builds a function for the sum of the RMS value of all data errors for all possibilities, and then minimizes that value.
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It reduces the effect of random errors. This is as it shows a general trend, and depending on the sample size will not be influenced by indiviual results which have been affected by random errors