Talk:False precision

message: "the exact conversion factor is 1 kgf = 9.80665 N"
Somehow I can't believe this is exact.  The number comes from the force of gravity on earth, no?  As I recall from physics classes, seconds is defined as a fraction of the earth's rotation period, and meters is defined as a fraction of the earth's circumference.  I can't believe the force of gravity is an exact ratio of these two constants.
Perhaps the text should read, "a more precise conversion factor..."?
--ScottJ 22:55, Mar 22, 2005 (UTC)
:No.  That's how kilograms-force are defined.  The amount of force that a kilogram will exert due to gravity will, of course, depend on its location.  Even if you limit yourself to sea level on Earth, that force will vary by 0.53%, from 0.9973 kgf at sea level at the equator, to 1.0026 kgf at sea level at the poles.  The second is defined based on a certain number of tranisitions in an atom of cesium-137.  The meter is based on the speed of light, defined so that the speed of light is exactly 299.792458 Mm/s.  Gene Nygaard 23:33, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  kgf -> N conversion 

message: Note the number of decimal places is only loosely "correlates" to precision. A classic example:
"According to the US National Bureau of Standards, the Speed of light is equal to: 299792.4574  ± 0.0011 km/s."
Note that the accuracy here is  ± 0.0011, and NOT a nice tidy  ± 0.00005 as some might suggest from the 4 decimal places.  I suggest using a "±" if there is confusion. 
i.e. Sometimes "true precision" is also false.
NevilleDNZ 03:25, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: The [[Speed of light]] and '±' 

message: I've removed the mention of a wikipedia article as an example of false precision. It violates avoid self-references and no original research (as the data is coming from wikipedia itself). I think the other examples are far more straightforward even though I understand the conversions in the wikipedia example. Graham87 04:39, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed; I also think using an article to highlight another editor's mistakes should generally be avoided as a matter of courtesy. By all means correct the error and explain things as appropriate on Talk pages, but I think highlighting errors that have been fixed works against Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages.--Calair 06:55, 31 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Using a wikipedia article as an example 

message: Should we include cases where people talk about "24 hours", rather than a day? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 22:59, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It used to give me a chuckle how often Star Trek mentioned multiples of 12 hours.  Was there ever an episode in which some disaster was due to happen in, say, 31 hours? —Tamfang (talk) 19:56, 25 May 2012 (UTC)

text: See also this tweet: “US intelligence agencies who said just 4 days ago that Kabul could fall in 90 days have revised the figure to 72 hours” —Tamfang (talk) 22:47, 6 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  24 hours? 

message: Wouldn't a more concise solution to the arithmetic example be something more like:
:  \frac{11}{3}\cdot 24 = \frac{11 \cdot 24}{3} = \frac{264}{3} = 88
Seems more straightforward to me. Lurlock (talk) 00:46, 11 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Arithmetic example 

message: Perhaps the most common cause of "false precision" is the introduction of irrational constants such as Pi for calculating areas, volumes, etc. Note: in the 1970's  this was commonly termed "artificial accuracy", and was often associated with the introduction of scientific calculators.
;
Another common type is combining estimates with exact numbers -- an example from WP: 
* World War I; Infobox -- Strength : Central Powers : Total = 25,248,321
~Eric F 184.76.225.106 (talk) 15:56, 25 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irrational numbers 

message: Not explicitely stating how high the precision of a measurement actually is has several disadvantages:
 * A number like "7.11" might mean that the measurement was accurate to 4 digits after the comma and the last 2 digits read "0". It might mean that no-one did care to write the last digits down or that some typesetter wanted the table to be more compact. It might state that the precision of the measurement device was 2%, 0.5%, .1% or 1%
 * in some cases stating that the precision is 10% by avoidong false precision will add another 10% to the measurement. Which if there is a square or a power function or the search for roots of a polynomial might add up quickly.
Therefore the article probably should contain a warning that not using false precision might cause problems, too.Peterpall (talk) 16:28, 2 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  The advantages of false precision 

message: The side menu links to the German entry Signifikante Stellen which links back to Significant figures, so obviously the link is wrong. It should refer to "Scheingenauigkeit". I tried to correct it myself but couldn't successfully commit the change due to some merging issue. Maybe some more advanced user can help. Eistea (talk) 06:54, 2 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Language menu links to wrong German entry