Physics: Accuracy vs. Precision?
What's the difference between the two? Also, I'm stuck on this problem:
John and his partner filled up a graduated cylinder. John claimed that the water came up to 661.0 mL and his partner came up with 61.5 mL. Based on what you know, is there an accuracy discrepancy or precision discrepancy. Why?
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A measurement is said to be accurate when the measured value equals its 'true' value.
However, it's possible to make a series of very precise measurements that are totally inaccurate.
Precision is how close your measurements are together.
For example,
If you used an old metre rule made of wood and then wrote down some measurements of the length of some object: 700mm, 699 mm, 701mm and 699mm; then your results show a high precision because that are all very close to one another. However, If I were then to tell you that this wood metre ruler had shrunk over the years and when compared with a standard modern metal rule it was in fact only 97cm in length, then you can see the the readings while precise are inaccurate due to this systematic error.
Precision also related to the number of decimal places in the result: 6.00203 being a more precise result than: 6.0
Based on your readings given, and what I've said above, I would say that there is a problem with accuracy