Sunday, March 16, 2014

Precision vs Accuracy

When ever you do any kind of measurement, it's important to understand the uncertainties associated with it.  Two characteristics of measurement that are inverse to uncertainties are 'precision' and 'accuracy' (also known as 'fidelity').  The following graphic, from this blog post, nicely demonstrate the difference between these two characteristics.


Other measurement characteristics include stability (repeatability from measurement to measurement), resolution (number of significant digits), sensitivity (ability to detect very small signals), linearity, range (from smallest valid value to largest valid value), and sampling rate (time slice or number of samples to establish a valid measurement).

1 comment:

  1. My favorite new graphic. Combines common sense terminology with the image. Very nicely done, but of course you are a visual information scientist....

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