Accurate or precise?

When you are deciding whether or not to spray, it is important to know whether your threshold levels should be termed accurate or precise.

Consider a superintendent who estimates that clover has infested more than five percent of a fairway. Considering the size of the fairway, that is more a rough approximation than an actual amount of clover.

On the other hand, our superintendent could examine several one-foot square plots and look at them for grubs and count the actual numbers of bugs found. The result would be a specific number to use when figuring threshold levels.

An accurate account, then, would be free from error. The superintendent knows clover from grass and will write down, accurately, the best estimate based on his knowledge. But the numbers he records are far from precise. Precision is sharply defined and based on a standard (one square foot, in this case).