My company is in the process of switching equipment from one vendor to another. We measured several metrics from the existing and new equipment and compared the time series. The ideal is to have no difference between the old and new equipment. For that, we use Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) to measure the difference.
We are to present the findings to upper management and employees at the plant, many of whom have no background in statistics. How should I explain the concept of RMSE to those audiences? If series X and Y have an RMSE of 5, how should I explain that 5 in layman's terms?
Best Answer
Starting with the most general, and then with increasing details:
Searching the web for information, in this case can be difficult, as RMSE also is an important concept in electricity, and most of the hits will reflect that! Some other posts here that can be useful is Forecast accuracy calculation and What is the difference between Mean Squared Deviation and Variance?, see also Wikipedia.