the.com/precision
the art of being exactly right while everyone else is approximately wrong
means the quality of being exact, accurate, and finely detailed, with no room for vagueness or error
from From Latin 'praecisio,' a cutting-off, from 'praecidere'—'prae-' (in front) plus 'caedere' (to cut). The same blade lurks in 'scissors,' 'concise,' and 'incision.' To be precise is, quite literally, to have trimmed away everything that isn't exactly right.
- watchmaking
- Fine mechanical watches measure to half a second daily
- atomic clocks
- Lose one second every 30 billion years
- surgical edge
- Scalpels can be sharpened to a single atom
- language trap
- Often confused with accuracy, which is different entirely
- machining
- Aerospace parts toleranced thinner than a human hair
for instance
machinist tolerance standards — iso 286 allows deviations measured in micrometers for manufacturing parts
gps accuracy specification — military gps accurate to 5 meters, civilian to 7.8 meters under standard conditions
atomic clock cesium-133 — defines the second to within 1 part in 10^15, used globally since 1967