Too little
Convenient certainty
It happened repeatedly, so “always” is close enough.
A limited observation is rewritten as a universal fact.
Exactitude
Preserve the conditions, frequency, and reach of the observation.
Dispositional fidelity to the particulars and limits of what one observes or represents.
Exactitude protects the border between what occurred and what a report invites readers to assume. It preserves consequential conditions, counts, versions, and limits without turning every available number into decoration. The exact claim may be narrower, but it gives repair and retesting a firmer place to begin.
Exactitude gives precision that refuses to impersonate certainty
The note says the issue occurs “every time.” The run card says four times in five attempts, on one browser version, after a particular sequence. The shorter claim looks stronger; the exact one is more informative. You keep the awkward count.
Finding the balance in Exactitude
A reporter replaces an oversized ALWAYS stamp with four colored result tokens out of five and a single bounded condition card.
A fitting response
Faithful particulars
It occurred in four of five attempts under these conditions.
Frequency and conditions travel with the claim.
Pursued too far
Decorative precision
List every number so the report appears rigorous.
Irrelevant detail and false precision crowd out the particulars that could change interpretation.
A qualification can increase a claim’s usefulness by showing where to look for its failure.
What Exactitude makes possible
A repairer knows which environment to reproduce and which outcome would challenge the report. A later test can genuinely confirm, narrow, or overturn the finding.
Exactitude in ordinary life
A recurring noise
Say when and how often it occurs instead of telling the mechanic it happens constantly.
A survey summary
Report the group and response count before allowing the percentage to stand for everyone.
Nearby virtues, different work
Syntharity (coined term)
Syntharity fits multiple observations into one faithful account; Exactitude keeps each observation’s scope from expanding inside that account.
Diligence
Diligence performs the sustained recording and handoff; Exactitude decides which particulars the claim must carry.
Exactitude and its counterfeits
False decimal courage
Extra digits create confidence the measurement never earned.
Qualifying into fog
So many minor caveats are added that the consequential condition becomes harder to find.
How to cultivate Exactitude
Replace absolute words with the observed count or condition.
Ask which omitted qualification would change the reader’s action.
Remove numbers that neither support nor bound the claim.
Try it today
Replace one absolute word in an ordinary note with the conditions and frequency you actually observed.
Questions worth returning to
- Which qualification would change how this claim is used?
- Does this number measure the phenomenon or decorate the sentence?
Quotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
By gently feeling along the edge of the slider, the notch was found and adjusted, and its exact position was then accurately measured by means of a thin and narrow plate of brass, the measurements being recorded on the brass for future reference.
The lock examiner measures the exact position and records it for future reference. The observation carries both method and durable particular.
These notches being cut only the exact width of the locking-plate, require the most perfect accuracy to carry each down to its proper distance.
A mechanism requires exact width and proper distance, making accuracy a relation to function rather than ornamental digits.
The first step in the use of every instrument, is to find the limits within which its employer can measure the SAME OBJECT UNDER THE SAME CIRCUMSTANCES.
Babbage begins instrument use by finding the limits within which the same object can be measured under the same circumstances. Precision starts with its boundary.
We may here remark that the average estimate of three Variable-cards coming into use to each operation, is not to be taken as an absolutely and literally correct amount for all cases and circumstances.
Lovelace warns that an average estimate is not literally correct in every circumstance. A useful general rule still needs its qualification.
It is obvious that it has no power of representing or of manipulating with any but finite increments or decrements; and consequently that wherever the computation of limits (or of any other functions) depends upon the direct introduction of quantities which either increase or decrease indefinitely, we are absolutely beyond the sphere of its powers.
She marks the sphere beyond which the engine’s finite operations cannot represent the required process. Exactitude names capability and limit together.
The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate any thing.
Lovelace says the engine can perform only what is ordered and cannot originate analytical truth. The famous limit prevents execution from being mistaken for judgment.
This example illustrates how the cards are able to reproduce all the operations which intellect performs in order to attain a determinate result, if these operations are themselves capable of being precisely defined.
The machine can reproduce intellectual operations only when those operations are precisely defined. Exact wording and defined procedure constrain the claim.
Continue through the catalog
Practice this collection
Choose this approved collection as an optional workbook program, or select individual virtues in My Virtues.