In fact, this tendency of original surveyors to repeat the same errors, can be a very useful tool when your intent is to retrace the steps of that original surveyor as a proper resurvey should do. This technique is called index correction for average error. Certain characteristics or patterns may be discovered by retracing a given surveyor's lines from many miles.

These patterns reflect whether he chained uniformly short or long, or was uniformly off to the right, or left of his record bearings.