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Oscillators exhibit a variety of instabilities.
These include aging, noise, and frequency changes with temperature, acceleration, ionizing radiation, power supply voltage, etc. The terms accuracy, stability, and precision are often used in describing an oscillator's quality with respect to its instabilities. Figure 15 illustrates the meanings of these terms for a marksman and for a frequency source. Accuracy, stability, and precision examples for a marksman, top, and for a frequency source, bottom. Accuracy is the extent to which a given measurement, or the average of a set of measurements for one sample, agrees with the definition of the quantity being measured.