Precision Gearing: Accuracy and Tolerances

When I was a child, one of the great joys of going on the family vacation was to pull out a paper map and review the details of the trip. What highways would we take? What bridges would we cross? What roadside sights would we see along the way? Mom was in charge of making certain that the directions to our vacation hideaway were both accurate and precise. After we packed up the station wagon and headed on our journey, we would inevitably ask, “where are we?” and “when are we going to get there?” This of course was countered with, “Look it up on the map and you can see precisely where we are.” This required us to have an accurate understanding of where we were currently driving through. However, the concepts of accuracy and precision were not something we were considering as we traveled to our summer getaway.