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prase comments on Cargo Cult Language - Less Wrong Discussion
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Aren't those actually the same? Also, what's the difference between "accurate" and "precise"?
Agh! I meant "polynomial" instead of "geometric". Yes, "geometric" is the same as "exponential". Edited. (How embarrassing.)
So did you "really know what you're saying and mean to say it" or were you "simply parroting"?
Heh.
In seriousness, I don't take typos / slips of the tongue / accidental word substitutions / etc. to be examples of what I'm talking about. As I said in my reply to drethelin, cargo cult language is one cause of word/phrase misuse, not the only use. The cases where someone corrects you, or asks for clarification, and you go "ah yeah, whoops, of course I meant X and not Y", are not cargo cult language, I'd say. I don't take such cases to make a difference to the point, which applies when people are intentionally saying something which has a meaning that they aren't aware of.
Broadly, being accurate is being close to the true answer, being precise is having low variability in the measurements. The wikipedia article has more detail.
I'd phrase it,
Precision is the reciprocal of the standard deviation of the estimate. Accuracy is the probability density of the estimate at the actual value.