I was working on a note to that effect, too, but you beat me to it. A lot of
people confuse accuracy with precision (almost in the same manner as confusing
chance with probability), and I think that the parent was going for 'precisely'
rather than 'accurately.' We people can vary greatly in what we get with a
complicated calculation, between forgetting to carry a 1, misplaced negative
signs, logarithm issues, etc. A computer, on the other hand, will give the same
answer time and time again, given the same input and same instruction set.
Computers are very precise.
Accuracy is a matter of getting the right answer and, if the instruction set is
correct for the given input, a computer will get the right answer time after
time, for a combination of precision and accuracy.
The analogy my professor gave when discussing the difference between the two
concerned target shooting. One shooter hits the target in the upper left
corner, but all of the shots fall within a 2" circle. The other shooter's
shots are all spread within a 12" circle around the center of the target.
The first shooter is very precise, but not nearly so accurate as the second
shooter.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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