Quotes About Precision

If the observers share a bias, the aggregation of judgments will not reduce it. Allowing the observers to influence each other effectively reduces the size of the sample, and with it the precision of the group estimate.

Allowing the observers to influence each other effectively reduces the size of the sample, and with it the precision of the group estimate.

System noise is inconsistency, and inconsistency damages the credibility of the system.

Averaging is mathematically guaranteed to reduce noise:

Whatever their flaws, rankings are less noisy than ratings.

The only thing more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack is finding a needle in a needlestack.

The only ill-chosen word in that sentence was "quasi.

In 1944, B-17 bomber formations dropped 9,070 bombs in order to hit one German building. In 1967, F-105 jet fighter-bombers used 176 munitions to knock out a single North Vietnamese building. By 1991, a smart F-16 fighter-bomber could do the job with thirty bombs, or just one, if the bomb was smart too.

The thing about Laurel and Hardy movies that you can't get from the chopped-up versions on television is how beautiful they are. Things happen exactly at the moment they have to happen. They don't happen a second too soon or too late. You can even predict what's going to happen—and it does happen—and it surprises you anyway. It doesn't surprise you because it happened, but because it happened so perfectly.

He would be painstaking in his approach, meticulous. For there was nothing more dangerous, he thought, than a patient man.

silence, speed, timing...

The best way to win at a game of chance is to remove chance from the equation.

numerical precision is the very soul of science, and its attainment affords the best, perhaps the only criterion of the truth of theories and the correctness of experiments.

When I dunk, I put something on it. I want the ball to hit the floor before I do.

He wrested the world's whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.

With his marine clocks, John Harrison tested the waters of space-time. He succeeded, against all odds, in using the fourth—temporal—dimension to link points on the three-dimensional globe. He wrested the world's whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.

Any clock that can track this sideral schedule proves itself as perfect as God's magnificent clockwork. Dava Sobel

He wrested the world's whereabouts from the stars, and locked the secret in a pocket watch.

For me, the worst part of playing golf, by far, has always been hitting the ball

The best advice I was ever given for testifying in court was simply to "Take . . . your . . . time.

I'd rather have one concrete plan and refine it by running through it over and over than try to have multiple plans and run the risk of confusing parts of them when it comes down to the wire.

If you can't write your idea on the back of my calling card, you don't have a clear idea.

Philately is exacting. It demands an eye and a memory for details, for the intricacies of designs, for tiny differences between one batch of stamps and another.

Be simple. Be honest. Don't overcook and don't undercook, but it's better to undercook than overcook.