this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
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Science Memes

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[–] gh0stb4tz@lemmy.world 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] rainwall@piefed.social 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Accuracy is about the abilty to hit a specific target, Precision is about being able to repeat it.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 2 points 1 month ago

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