Measurement Error Quotes

Larry Moffett is 6' 3". Last year he was 6" 6".

Statistics is the first of the inexact sciences.

Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man. Every careful measurement in science is always given with the probable error ... every observer admits that he is likely wrong, and knows about how much wrong he is likely to be.

Most businesses fail because they want the right things but measure the wrong things, and they get the wrong results.

I've been 5-6 since I've been at least 17 or 18. I think somebody made a mistake on the measurements.

Now, since our condition accommodates things to itself, and transforms them according to itself, we no longer know things in their reality; for nothing comes to us that is not altered and falsified by our Senses. When the compass, the square, and the rule are untrue, all the calculations drawn from them, all the buildings erected by their measure, are of necessity also defective and out of plumb. The uncertainty of our senses renders uncertain everything that they produce.

It is never possible to predict a physical occurrence with unlimited precision.

All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.

Hey Ridley, that Machometer is acting screwy. It just went off the scale on me.

Be precise. A lack of precision is dangerous when the margin of error is small.

Early numbers are always wrong.

It's a basketball thing, I think. I said I was just over 6'7," and they made it 6'8", and it's always kind of been that way.

He [Groucho's father] had absolutely no training, and if you had ever seen one of his suits, you'd realize what an accurate statement that is. You see, Pop never used a tape measure. He didn't believe in it. He said he could just look at a man and tell his size, with the result that frequently he'd make a pair of pants with one trouser leg seven or eight inches longer than the other.

One can see that a canvas is six feet by eight feet, say, quite accurately. But you can spend two minutes and think it's five, or thirty seconds and it's just a different bed for activities there.

Every glass thermometer has subtle variations in the size and shape of the bulb at the bottom and the capillary tube inside, as well as variations in the width of gradations on the side. The compounded effect of these uncertainties is that each thermometer reads temperature slightly differently.

Only because you moved forwards, it doesn't mean you were effective. Sometimes it's the wrong criteria to be used.

There we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial.

Refining is inevitable in science when you have made measurements of a phenomenon for a long period of time.

No requirement of industry is so much neglected as operational definitions.

I have a map of the united states .... it's original size ... it says one mile equals one mile.

Going from an error rate of 25 meters in GPS to 2.5 meters is huge. Going to 25 centimeters is going to matter just as much.

For as long as one has no further point of reference, apart from the position of the maximum, the wavelength thus remains uncertain by an integral factor.