An accurate statement or a precise statement?
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| Borrowed without permission from Grey Ops. |
Dr. J. can’t stand lawyers, other than ‘Puter and perhaps one or two others here in New Atlantis.
That is probably one of the reasons he doesn’t like President Obama. He sometimes lies when telling the truth.
A terrific example is the other night when he was on Letterman.
Letterman: Now do you remember what that number was? $10 Trillion?
Obama: I don’t know what the number was precisely.
Now let Dr. J. be clear. President Obama chose his word carefully.
Dr. J. learned the difference between accuracy and precision back in 10th grade chemistry, and it equally applies here.
Think of an archery target.
Accuracy represents how close you are to the bullseye.
Precision represents reproducibility. So, if you hit the blue ring between 11 O’Clock and 1 OClock you are very precise but not very accurate (assuming you are aiming for the bullseye).
By way of contrast, if you hit the target near the bullseye, but in a scattered manner, you are accurate, but not very precise.
If you are the Green Arrow, and split your arrow in the center of the bullseye, you are both accurate and precise.
Given that spending is going on continuously, it is difficult to know the national debt precisely. By the time you carry the answer out to the penny, we’ve spent another million dollars.
We can be fairly accurate when we say the debt is $16 Trillion, and he’s wracked up quite a bit of it in only 3.5 years.
