C.J. Vanish, Rolls-Royce PLC, claims that simplifying the confusing concept of uncertainty analyses should lead to greater usage and potentially large financial benefit. A jewellers balance is much more accurate than a cheap set of bathroom scales, this is obvious, however, 'How much more accurate?' is an interesting question in that it can provoke heated debates about how to assess this. That a jewellers balance is more accurate is precisely as it should be, due to the high price of gems and gold, whereas a pound or two in your weight does not really matter. Accuracy is thus seen to be important in commerce, and hence is equally important in the engineering of jewellers scales. Obviously accuracy is important in engineering generally, a world full of tolerances on components with commercial considerations attached to meeting exacting specifications on products and penalty payments or warranties on failure to conform to specifica- tion. 'How much more accurate?' is a debatable point currently with no uniformly and universally accepted methodology used to produce uniform and repeatable uncertainty statements, although accuracy statements may often be bandied about.
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