Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun The state or quality of being precise; exactness.
- noun The ability of a measurement to be consistently reproduced.
- noun The number of significant digits to which a value has been reliably measured.
- adjective Used or intended for accurate or exact measurement.
- adjective Made so as to vary minimally from a set standard.
- adjective Of or characterized by accurate action.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The quality or state of being precise, exact, or definite as to form or meaning; distinctness; accuracy.
- noun In logic: Freedom from inessential elements.
- noun The separation from anything of extrinsic elements.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The quality or state of being precise; exact limitation; exactness; accuracy; strict conformity to a rule or a standard; definiteness.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun the state of being
precise orexact ;exactness - noun the
ability of ameasurement to bereproduced consistently - noun mathematics the
number ofsignificant digits to which avalue may bemeasured reliably - adjective used for exact or precise
measurement - adjective made, or characterized by
accuracy
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun the quality of being reproducible in amount or performance
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word precision.
Examples
-
Using Attributional Similarity to Solve Analogies number of correct guesses precision = total number of guesses made number of correct guesses recall = maximum possible number correct 2 x precision x recall F = precision recall
-
The term precision is considered as a component of accuracy, related to the scale, resolution, and also to the generalization of datasets.
Recently Uploaded Slideshows dgaby 2010
-
Our new foreign policy is what I call precision power.
Mayhill Fowler: The New Strategy for Obama's War: Precision Power 2009
-
Details very sketchy at this hour but U.S. officials confirming overnight there was what they call a precision missile strike against a target in southern Somalia near the border with Kenya, a target that they say was in an area where there were known terrorists, al Qaeda terrorists with affiliations.
-
Now, earlier today, the U.S. military launched what it calls a precision air strike.
-
The 53-second clip provides a rare look at how the U.S. uses what it calls precision air strikes in urban areas to support ground operations.
-
If you remember in the Gulf War, about 10 percent of our munitions were what we call precision-guided munitions; in Operations Allied Force about 90 percent of our munitions were guided munitions.
-
The cost to produce the bug, which he characterized as precision handwork within the knowledge and competence of a handful of men, he estimated at $30,000 per unit.
Will Liddy, G. Gordon 1980
-
AlCuMet makes what it calls precision castings out of aluminum and other alloys for the military, aerospace and other industries.
WCAX - Local News 2010
-
Our new foreign policy is what I call precision power.
The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com Mayhill Fowler 2009
oroboros commented on the word precision
Here's an example of precision for you:
Consider telescope mirrors:
"Both mirrors for telescopes on the 'big island' of Hawaii are light-years beyond everyday concepts of precision. Ground and polished for four years...the Subaru mirror surface has been smoothed to within about half a millionth of an inch. The surface of Gemini...is precise to within a thousandth of the diameter of a human hair. To make such perfection easier to imagine, if the Big Island could be leveled and polished as evenly (in proportion) as the Subaru mirror, the biggest bump would be no higher than the thickness of two sheets of paper. If the entire earth could be smoothed to the same accuracy as Gemini, the tallest hill would be less than a foot high."
--Howard Daniel, Pen4Rent
August 29, 2007
hugovk commented on the word precision
precision, n.
<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/04/is-uk-claim-zero-civilian-casualties-iraq-airstrikes-credible">The Guardian, 4 December 2015</a>:
December 31, 2015