In an experiment I am conducting, I am trying to measure low currents by wiring a radio device in series with a small-resistance resistor setup, composed of 9 of 1 ohm +/- 5% resistors in series and parallel as shown below, resulting in a total of 1 ohm.
By my understanding, resistors are manufactured such that there is a distribution of values centered by the marked value with most of them lying in the +/- 5% range, but in theory, there will always be resistors outside such range.
While in theory (by error analysis formulas) my series-parallel setup would have the same error as each one of the resistors, intuitively, doing so is in essence taking the average of the 9 resistors and thus tightening up that distribution curve, such that the error %age is lowered. This was my intent in doing those 9 resistors as opposed to only 1 resistor.
So my question is: What is the error of the 9 resistor setup? Theoretically, I calculate 5% but by intuition, it is less. If it's the former, I would like to know why, and if it's the latter, I would like to know how to find the final percentage error in this situation. I hope it is the latter so that I can qualify my experimental technique (oh and speaking of which, please assume that the voltage drop of the resistor setup does not drop the current through the circuit).