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ACCURATE/PRECISE |
In ordinary usage, “accurate” and “precise” are often used as rough
synonyms, but scientists like to distinguish between them. Someone could
say that a snake is over a meter long and be accurate (the snake really
does exceed one meter in length), but that is not a precise measurement.
To be precise, the measurement would have to be more exact: the snake is
1.23 meters long. The same distinction applies in scientific contexts to
the related words “accuracy” and “precision.”
