I would suggest that the Oxford Dictionary definitions have high accuracy but
low precision. (:
At any rate, I think you want to look at the
technical definition, since that's the framework in which these terms
were raised:
accuracy
technical the degree to
which the result of a measurement, calculation, or specification conforms to the
correct value or a
standard
precision
technical
refinement in a measurement, calculation, or specification, especially as
represented by the number of digits given
While I'd agree
that, as other posters also note, the terms are generally treated as
interchangeable in non-technical conversation, I also think the distinction as
drawn by the technical definitions is a useful one to draw. In the context of
news reporting, one might distinguish the terms as
follows:
- accuracy: the degree to which a news report is
correct (i.e., matches the objective facts of what is being
reported)
- precision: the amount of detail included in a news
report
Clearly, it's possible to be detailed without also being
correct; for example, the Onion is full of such reports (not that the Onion is
trying to be correct in the first place, of course). A more apropos example
might be all the reports back when SCO started its litigation engine about how
Linux was in trouble: the reports were precise, in the sense of being detailed
(with excerpts from court filings, analyst quotes, and the like), but the
reports nonetheless missed the mark, being an inaccurate report on the situation
as a whole.
For my part, I took the OP's comment as a jab at how many
news reports tend to regurgitate press releases or other one-sided reports
without properly investigating the issues covered by the report. [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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