precision
Precision describes how close estimates are to one another. Estimates that are relatively close to one another are precise. Lets assume that ten different students made an estimate of the volume shown in Figure above , and the values were: 52.9, 52.8, 52.9, 52.9, 53.3, 52.0, 52.8, 52.9, 53.0, 52.8. We can determine how precise these data by analyzing how close they are to an average. The average could be the mean, median or mode. The most common understanding of the average is the mean. This value is calculated by adding up all the numbers and then dividing by the total number of values. Other terms that can refer to the average are the median and the mode. The median is the middle value in a numerically ordered list of numbers. The mode is the value that occurs most often in a set of numbers. If no number is repeated, there is no mode for the list. Here are the calculated averages:.