this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
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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
There's also a difference between not knowing the difference and always getting them mixed up. The diagram doesn't help with the stated problem. Also, it doesn't address the question.
You're not wrong, but visuals often help so it doesn't hurt to share. I remember this picture when I need to differentiate the two terms, but some people use mnemonics or other memory devices.
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!
If you average out the low precision, high accuracy shots you will get a single point as your result. If that point is not already in the dead centre, then increasing accuracy is simply a matter of shifting that point closer to it. You can do that without increasing precision by moving the entire shot spread in that direction.
I've found this analogy often confuses people because in the shooting world the terminology is a little different. There the high precision spread would be considered high accuracy, with it only being a matter of adjusting the sights to get it on centre. And nobody is winning a shooting competition by arguing that the average of their shot spread is in the centre.
Yeah I get that the centre of the distribution is on the bullseye, it just doesn’t fit with the ordinary meaning of the word “accurate.”
It also falls apart with a small sample size. If I fire only a single shot and hit the bullseye, that doesn’t tell you anything. However, in everyday speech most people would describe that as an accurate shot.