Precision is about how fine a scale you can use to describe the position; what you described is repeatability
A clock with a sweep arm is more precise than one without
A digital clock showing fractions of a second is more precise
An atomic clock is even more precise
My nice precise long case chiming clock is precise to about the half minute, but it gains time when the weather becomes colder and loses time when weather becomes warmer, so it has poor repeatability. Its accuracy is good enough as I correct and tune it weekly when I wind it
My wife’s cuckoo clock is low precision with only 12 marks on it’s face and each of those being blunt and a few minutes wide, it also only sounds half hourly, tweeting the hour or once on the half hour
The high accuracy, low precision regime seems so strange to me! I think not many would call that situation “high accuracy” with most of the shots missing the bullseye!
Plus it seems like if you just keep increasing accuracy, you necessarily force all the shots to converge on the bullseye, don’t you? Then you get precision “for free” which is strange!
Huh, how accurate/precise (I always mix them up) were the real patients? Did they just identify every other patient as an imposter?
This shows the difference between accuracy and precision.
Thank you.
Accuracy is about the abilty to hit a specific target, Precision is about being able to repeat it.
Precision is about how fine a scale you can use to describe the position; what you described is repeatability
A clock with a sweep arm is more precise than one without
A digital clock showing fractions of a second is more precise
An atomic clock is even more precise
My nice precise long case chiming clock is precise to about the half minute, but it gains time when the weather becomes colder and loses time when weather becomes warmer, so it has poor repeatability. Its accuracy is good enough as I correct and tune it weekly when I wind it
My wife’s cuckoo clock is low precision with only 12 marks on it’s face and each of those being blunt and a few minutes wide, it also only sounds half hourly, tweeting the hour or once on the half hour
The high accuracy, low precision regime seems so strange to me! I think not many would call that situation “high accuracy” with most of the shots missing the bullseye!
Plus it seems like if you just keep increasing accuracy, you necessarily force all the shots to converge on the bullseye, don’t you? Then you get precision “for free” which is strange!
Sometimes the visual example doesn’t work well when describing math. So an alternate:
Pick a number 1 - 10. 8. Correct and accurate.
Pick a number 1 - 10. 3.1415926535. Uhh, precise, but not accurate.
I’d be interested in consistency too.