http://lifehacker.com/5829224/how-embracing-vagueness-can-help-you-achieve-your-goals

How Embracing Vagueness Can Help You Achieve Your Goals

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We live in a world or precision where data-generating technology is available for practically aspect of your life. We’re also bombarded by tools to help us plan everything down to the smallest detail. But without uncertainty you’re stuck in a place where you always think you know the answer, and this can be a major encumbrance when you’re trying to get things done.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_precision

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False precision (also called overprecision, fake precision, misplaced precision and spurious accuracy) occurs when numerical data are presented in a manner that implies better precision than is actually the case; since precision is a limit to accuracy, this often leads to overconfidence in the accuracy as well.[1]

In science and engineering, convention dictates that unless a margin of error is explicitly stated, the number of significant figures used in the presentation of data should be limited to what is warranted by the precision of those data. For example, if an instrument can be read to an accuracy of tenths of a unit of measurement, results of calculations using data obtained from that instrument can only be confidently stated to the tenths place, regardless of what the raw calculation returns or whether other data used in the calculation are more accurate. Even outside these disciplines, there is a tendency to assume that all the non-zero digits of a number are meaningful; thus, providing excessive figures may lead the viewer to expect better precision than actually exists.

However, in contrast, it is good practice to retain more significant figures than this in the intermediate stages of a calculation, in order to avoid accumulated rounding errors.

False precision commonly arises when high-precision and low-precision data are combined, and in conversion of units.

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I can remember a wise old Christian Brother in injineering skrule saying: “Gentlemen, … <he always used it perjoratively> … you will make blunders, mistakes, and errors, but a sure way to get an F in injineering measurements is to tell me that anything that is ⅓ is .333333333333333.” False precision in injineering is like goal and objectives that aren’t vague enough to stretch.

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