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Since the dawn of physic hundreds years ago, we never stopped measuring something. Almost in every aspect in physic you will always deal with measurement, either in qualitative or quantitative observations. While the one and only way of measuring something is by using measuring devices. However none of measuring devices on Earth is perfectly accurate and precise. In every measurement, there will be always uncertainty involved. Besides that, our frames of reference will also “disturb” the measurements. A good measurement is a very crucial aspect in physic. So we can ask, is there any certainty in physic?
Accuracy and precision is two different things that affect the measurement. In general term, accuracy show how close the measurement to the ‘expected’ value, while precision shows how close together the data and how the repeatability of the measurements. In high accuracy counting, the data will be very closely or even exactly the same with the ‘correct’ values. Accuracy is a qualitative concept, because it depends on measurement agreement, the agreement of the correct or true value of the measurement.
Precision is nothing to do with the accuracy. When we have plenty of data, and the result of the data is close together we can said that the measurement is precise, no matter if it is close to ‘correct’ value or not. We can say this condition also with repeatable condition. In a high precision measurement, the different between each data is very low.
If we measure the mass of ‘50g mass’ in a balance, and when the balance shows exactly 50g, we can said that that measurement and measuring device is accurate. The closest the balance to the true value (50g) the more accurate the balance is. In precision, there are several ways to show whether our measurement is precise or not. The simplest way to proof that is by counting the range of the data we get. Range is the highest number of data we have minus lowest number data we got. The lower the range...