Title: cause-and-effect diagram
Long Title: IUPAC Gold Book - cause-and-effect diagram
DOI: 10.1351/goldbook.08062
Status: current

Definition
Diagram indicating the causes of a specific event or condition.

Note
In analytical chemistry, Ishikawa diagrams are used to indicate sources of measurement uncertainty. See Fig. 1. Figure 1: Ishikawa diagram for the titration of a hydrochloric acid solution with sodium hydroxide solution that has been standardized using potassium hydrogen phthalate (KHP). When used for identification of sources of measurement uncertainty, the diagram illustrates how the quantity value of the measurand (\(c_{\ce{HCl}}\)) depends on input quantities in a measurement model (symbols in bold), which in turn depend on other quantities. Symbols have their usual meanings. \(f_{\rm{precision}}\) is a is a factor in the measurement function to account for measurement precision with value 1 and standard measurement uncertainty.

Related Term
- analytical chemistry: https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/08003

Source
- PAC, 2021, 93, 997. 'Metrological and quality concepts in analytical chemistry (IUPAC Recommendations 2021)' on page 1021 (https://doi.org/10.1515/pac-2019-0819)

Other Outputs
- html: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08062/html
- json: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08062/json
- xml: https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/08062/xml

Citation: Citation: 'cause-and-effect diagram' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.08062
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Accessed: 2026-07-27T13:34:07+00:00