Early last month Seth Godin made a post about precision and accuracy. The more I have thought about it, the more convinced I am that he hasn’t fully considered his argument. Either that, or I am not aligned with the way he is defining his terms.
Precision requires producing the same results each time. Repeatable, measurable, dependable.
Accuracy means hitting the target.
The only way to consistently be accurate is to be precise.
But there are plenty of precision methods that don’t yield the most desired outcomes.
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The world we live in is recent, and was created by a revolution in precision. We’re still working on accuracy.
About the only thing I am in agreement with his his statement about precision methods not yielding most desired outcomes.
What first came to mind when I read this statements is that I have had periods where I was able to bowl multiple strikes consecutively, consistently send a ball through a basketball hoop, and cluster darts around a bullseye. I was repeatedly hitting my target in the sweet spot.
The only problem is, I didn’t know why I was achieving that success. I wasn’t as aware of my body as I am now. So those successes were as much as surprise to me as everyone else. When the stakes aren’t really high, you don’t ask questions and just hope things keep going your way.
Sure, arguably my skill was only repeatable and dependable over a relatively short period of time. But I would also point out that people have realized a lot of success based on the foundation of being a literal or figurative one-hit wonder in entertainment, sports, advertising, stocks, etc.
Generally though, accuracy and precision without understanding the contributing factors isn’t worth much for long.
Arts and cultural organizations run into this a lot. We realize unexpected success with an event, but can’t seem to replicate it again. We don’t know if it was that particular show/opportunity. The marketing approach. That specific set of dates in October. The weather.
Ruth Hartt has been writing about how audience motivations are largely invisible but that you can gain better insight by asking questions directed at their desired outcomes vs. the organization’s.
But it is certainly not an issue that only arts and cultural organizations face. So many bosses have asked their staff to make something viral that it has only succeeded in creating a meme. Closely related to that are the millions upon millions spent on ads during the Super Bowl that fail to connect or raise a questioning eyebrow about what the advertiser was thinking.
You and Seth have both conflated “precision” and “repeatability”. A measurement can be very precise without being accurate or repeatable. I could easily buy a scale that reports my weight to the gram, but my weight fluctuates a lot (due to sweating, drinking, urination, … )and the measurement would not be repeatable over more than a few minutes. So I could have a precise measurement that is not repeatable.
The value of my mutual funds is similarly reported to the penny, but the actual value if I try to sell it may be 1% or more different from the reported value. So I can have precise measurements that are not accurate.
I can also have repeatable, accurate measurements that are not precise—I’m about 5’10” every time I have my height measured, though my actual height does fluctuate a little due to posture changes and (over the decades) compression of the vertebral disks.
There is also the concept of “validity”—whether the measure means anything useful. High school grades have become an invalid measure of learning, for example, thanks to grade inflation and lack of calibration between courses, teachers, schools, … .
Precision, repeatability, accuracy, and validity are all different concepts, though people informally conflate them (either in pairs or all together).
Thanks. Your explanation provides a lot of clarity on the concept that I was missing. Even as I wrote it, I felt a sense of fuzziness that I was missing some key elements in my discussion.