Concept
Accuracy and precision
Overview
Accuracy and precision are measures of observational error; accuracy is how close a given set of measurements is to the true value and precision is how close the measurements are to each other.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines a related measure:
trueness, "the closeness of agreement between the arithmetic mean of a large number of test results and the true or accepted reference value."
While precision is a description of random errors (a measure of statistical variability),
accuracy has two different definitions:
More commonly, a description of systematic errors (a measure of statistical bias of a given measure of central tendency, such as the mean). In this definition of "accuracy", the concept is independent of "precision", so a particular set of data can be said to be accurate, precise, both, or neither. This concept corresponds to ISO's trueness.
A combination of both precision and trueness, accounting for the two types of observational error (random and systematic), so that high accuracy requires both high precision and high trueness. This usage corresponds to ISO's definition of accuracy (trueness and precision).
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Such was the doctrine of Plato concerning the Species or Specific Essence of things. This, at least, is what his words seem to import, and thus he is understood by Aristotle, the most intelligent and the most renowned of all his disciples. It is a doctrine, which, like many of the other doctrines of abstract Philosophy, is more coherent in the expression than in the idea; and which seems to have arisen, more from…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
States what Accuracy and precision is; names Accuracy and precision.
It is a common observation that a science first begins to be exact when it is quantitatively treated. What are called the exact sciences are no others than the mathematical ones. Chemists reasoned vaguely until Lavoisier showed them how to apply the balance to the verification of their theories, when chemistry leaped suddenly into the position of the most perfect of the classificatory sciences.
Charles S. Peirce, Chance, Love, and Logic
States what Accuracy and precision is.
But the interval is only definite when the two events are very near together; otherwise the interval depends upon the route chosen for travelling from the one event to the other. Four numbers are needed to fix the position of an event in the world; these correspond to the time and the three dimensions of space in the old reckoning. These four numbers are called the co-ordinates of the event. They may be assigned on…
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
States what Accuracy and precision is.
Related ideas
- Measurement
- Statistics
- Science
- Scientific method
- Transistor
- Dependent and independent variables
- Reproducibility
- Quantity
- Reliability (statistics)
- Validity (statistics)