How close is “accurate?” And, is “accurate” the same as “precise?” Actually, they’re not when it comes to the physical sciences.

 

The former describes a measurement’s proximity to a true or standard value. The latter describes how close several measurements come to each other in terms of cluster or dispersion.

 

If, for example, all three shooters miss a target’s bulls-eye by two-inches to the left or right, the results are precise but inaccurate.

 

If all three shooters hit within the bulls-eye circle, their shooting is accurate and precise. If all three miss all over the target, their shots of neither accurate nor precise.

 

Precisely quantifiable measurements are easy to see. Either we hit a target’s bulls-eye or we don’t. If we do, we’re accurate. If miss it, we’re not accurate.

 

Many people missing a bulls-eye in approximately the same place may make their aim precise, but “precise inaccuracy” is nothing to brag about.

 

The point is how important all of this is in our everyday lives. At which points is it important to be accurate, precisely accurate, in the ballpark, and even in the same country as the ballpark?

 

In other words, we have to learn when “precisely accurate” is unnecessary and that demanding it anyway is tantamount to flicking fly doo-doo out of pepper.

 

Opposing politicians and radio/TV talk show hosts do the latter simply to be self-serving. But, at other times, both “precision” and “accuracy” are critical.

 

A monthly mortgage payment, based on a 30-year mortgage amortization schedule, requires accuracy to two decimal places. Otherwise, the mortgage company will be unhappy.

 

For example, if the payment is $349.03 per month, a mortgage company is going to get awfully snotty if you decide to round the payment down to $349.

 

A neurosurgeon, about to launch a tumor-destroying laser beam through a cancer patient’s skull and into the affected area of the brain, MUST be dead-on accurate.

 

Mere precision won’t cut it. And “precise inaccuracy” will draw personal liability lawyers like honey draws ants.

 

On the contrary, converting a 50-mile trip to its equivalent in kilometers doesn’t require precise accuracy. Estimating between 80-kilometers and 81-kilometers is good enough.

 

How many seconds comprise a year? Let’s see…3,600-seconds per hour, times 24-hours per day, times 365-days per year. That comes to, um, 31,536,000 seconds! Right?

 

Who actually cares? Technically speaking, though, you’d be wrong because there is a leap year every four years. So, the average number of seconds in a year has to be 31,557,600, dummy.

 

I know… I know! Some of the more technically oriented are in the midst of impending cranial explosion because it’s more technical than this. Don’t send me email. Take a valium instead.

 

Last Tuesday afternoon I helped judge at a science Olympiad. Two ninth-grade students almost came to blows over the “EXACT” distance calculation for a light-year.

 

One put the distance at 5,869,713,600,000 miles—he ignored scientific notation. He based it on light speed at 186,000 miles per second.

 

The other student disagreed because the “EXACT” light speed is 186,300 miles per second, NOT 186,000 miles per second. Therefore, he reasoned that a light-year is 5,879,180,880,000 miles.

 

The above argument, at least to me, indicated that a teacher might have placed too much emphasis on mastering the use of scientific calculators and too little emphasis on how to apply common sense to the numbers!

 

Also, neither student seemed at all interested in the use and convenience of the metric system, the universal language of astrophysics. More on the metric system a little later.

 

Suffice it to say that a “ballpark” estimate of around 6-trillion miles or about 10-trillion kilometers would have been quite accurate enough.

 

Common sense is just as lacking relative to our qualitative dealings as well.

 

People seem just as prone to flicking the fly doo-doo out of pepper regarding matters of “opinion,” too, particularly if it suits their political needs.

 

President Obama’s swearing in ceremony a couple of weeks ago served to illustrate the point nicely when Chief Justice John Roberts repositioned ONE word of the presidential oath of office.

 

Instead of having President Obama repeat, “I solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of president,” he moved “faithfully” to the end of the sentence.

 

He told Mr. Obama to repeat, “I solemnly swear that I will execute the office of president faithfully.” It caused Mr. Obama to pause and look, making both of them seem confused.

 

Steven Pinker of the New York Times explained what happened. Click here to read what he wrote. I’m going to paraphrase a bit, though.

 

As insignificant as it was, the “blunder” almost caused the White House lawyers to go poopy in their pants. They asked Chief Justice Roberts to come to the Oval Office to re-administer the oath just to be “extra” cautious.

 

Because he did so after dark, it got the reporting media’s collective back up when they found out about it the next morning. So, they “demanded” some answers.

 

Of course, the rest of cable TV’s intrepid windbags and syndicated radio talking heads joined the feeding frenzy as well.

 

But, John Roberts was not attempting to negate the oath of office or make any other kind of ideological statement.

 

While he should not have changed the wording sequence of the oath, in his mind he did NOT make a mistake by doing so.

 

As I did, John Roberts graduated from a Catholic high school. He probably had the same kind of grammar teacher as I did: a mean, nasty old Oblate priest, or worse, even a Jesuit.

 

Regardless, these people believed, FIRMLY, in TORTURE for those who screwed up the ancient and sacred rules of grammar.

 

The writer’s code of that era classified the use of split infinitives, split verbs, beginning ANY sentence with a conjunction, and ending ANY sentence with a preposition as grammatical felonies.

 

Gradually the grammar gods downgraded them to the status of grammatical misdemeanors. And, today, only very stodgy old grammar gods still consider these “wrong,” even if we don’t overdo it.

 

I mean, like, Andy Rooney, himself, wrote an essay in which he advocated eliminating apostrophes in contractions.

 

Instead of “didn’t,” just use “didnt.” Can phonetic spelling be far behind? Who knows!

 

None of this matters, though, because Chief Justice Roberts is a grammatical traditionalist. He has been obsessive/compulsive about fixing what he considers writing mistakes most of his adult life.

 

I’m the same way! It takes an unbelievable degree of effort for me NOT to fix other writers’ blaring grammar errors.

 

And, I’m fixing them at the same time that I’m making some of my own mistakes. But, I’m not a person of notable literary consequence.

 

Whenever I do it, no one notices or even cares. However, Chief Justice John Roberts is a very important dude. Millions listen whenever he speaks. Even more READ whenever he writes.

 

And, this time he was speaking before 1.8-million people in physical attendance at the inaugural, plus about a billion or so more around the world who were watching it on television.

 

It’s an understatement to say that a huge throng of people noticed the “oops.”

 

And finally, as promised, here’s something for people to think about in terms of America’s reluctance to go full-tilt into adopting the metric system.

 

It has nothing to do with us being pig-headed about it or too snobbish. We’re certainly not too stupid to understand it. After all, it took us no time at all to master the use of the 9-millimeter bullet!

 

But, beyond this interest, we’ve shown little enthusiasm toward changing from the English system to metric. As a nation, we love generalities and the metric system is too specific. It would simply be too boring and confusing.

 

Think of all of the ingrained audio banter that we’d have to give up if we abandoned the good old English system. We’d all end up sounding plain stupid.

 

Imagine us saying this: “He missed by only 0.3048-meters, but it might just as well have been 1.6039 kilometers. Or, how about this one. “Give that creep 2.54 centimeters and he’ll take 1.6093 kilometers.”

 

I don’t know about you, but I think telling people “spare the 5.03 meters and spoil the child” sounds dorky as all get out, even though “twenty-eight grams of prevention is worth 453 grams of cure!”

 

And, trust me. It’s best NOT to get into jock strap and bra sizes. Screw the metric system. We don’t need it to know EXACTLY what size 36-double B means. Let’s leave it at that.

 

Joe Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. You may comment on his column by clicking here.