Misunderstood: Precision and Accuracy

A response to the Misunderstood Activity
created by Sarabpreet Kaur (@sarab5preet)

Number of views: 312

The concept of precision and accuracy.

It’s a class 9 concept and mostly, students fail to understand this concept in the first go. This failure arises since the definitions of Precision and Accuracy are very similar to each other. And students of class 9 have not used the terms that much in practical and theoretical work as their teachers might have. It’s a very basic concept, but if students have not understood it well then other topics and practical work will make no sense to them, which includes these terms.

An analogy:

Consider a shooting game. Let’s say a person hit 5 shots on the goal. There is a target paper that shows where the bullet hit.

Now if all the shots are scattered on the target paper, then both the accuracy and precision are low.

If the shots are very close to each other but not close to the center of the target, we can say the accuracy is low, but the precision is high, as all shots are close.

On the other hand, if the shots are scattered in the center’s closed proximity, then the accuracy is good but precision is low.

And the ultimate case could be that all the shots are close to each other and make a range within the center, then both the precision and accuracy are high. We can clearly see this in the picture below.

http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glacial-geology/dating-glacial-sediments-2/precision-and-accuracy-glacial-geology/

Similarly, the readings taken in the practical work of chemistry or physics have high or low accuracy and precision depending upon the values of the various readings taken during the lab work.