People conflate these two concepts too much. The two words are used almost synonymously.
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about” is a phrase that may mean someone agrees with you strongly, or it could merely mean you are on point, but not in agreement. It’s not a very precise way to communicate because they have distinctly different meanings.
Accuracy connotes correctness. Precision speaks only to the level of detail. It is possible to be very precise, yet inaccurate. This is easily shown through looking at the value of π (pi), the numerical value for the ratio of the circumference of a circle relative to its diameter. We commonly see pi depicted as 3.14. This is accurate, and reasonably precise. We know in the background it is an irrational number; one that can’t be resolved into a fraction. It starts with 3.14159265358979 and continues forever in a non-repeating fashion, but 3.14 is precise enough for most work.
Here are a few different possible depictions of pi and how they relate to the two concepts.
Value Accuracy Precision
314 No No
3.8545841 No Yes
3.1 Yes No
3.141592653 Yes Yes
You possibly learned about scientific notation in school as a way to depict large numbers with relatively few digits. Many students missed one of the underlying points that it also affords an ability to be very accurate without always having to be precise. If I say, “50,000 people were at the concert” do I really mean it was exactly 50,000 people? Of course not. I’m not being precise, but I am (presumably) accurate.
So, to more “accurately” convey what I really mean, I could write that number using scientific notation. It might look like this. 50 x 10^3 people were at the concert. This means 50,xxx people were at the concert. Any number from 50,000 to 50,999 is implied. Accurate, but not precise. If I believe the number is in the range of 50,500 to 50,599, I could write it as 505 x 10^2.
Yeah, whatever. We break all sorts of rigorous rules in communication. What really matters is that we are able to communicate. We usually do okay, but there can be enough slop in it that things go wrong sometimes. We are linguistic beings who count on our linguistic interpretations to define every conscious thought. When we aren’t precise enough in what we communicate, we give rise to unpredictable results.
Accuracy is generally the more highly regarded of the two qualities, but precision may have the most intrinsic value because it is repeatable.

The quote, “it’s better to be lucky than good” may apply here. But when we throw luck out the window and focus more on our ability to accomplish something and get where we want/need to go, precision, or shall I say, consistency, is a characteristic we can use in the process. Otherwise it feels more like a game of chance, which is very difficult to manage.
One of the useful characteristics of religion, or any strongly held belief system, is that it tends to make those people more predictable, if not obedient. At a practical level it’s actually a pretty vital part of making our society work.
Like this:
Like Loading...