On Mon, May 06, 2002 at 07:15:20PM -0400, ERito@aol.com wrote:
> i think that it is incredible that we would demand a 1/2% repeat
> accuracy from a portable sale. we are talking lab accuracy here in
> something that gets hauled from place to place.
What prevents a portable scale from having good accuracy? I don't
think that it's at all incredible. It seems like it's the quality and
design that are important to accuracy, and not the size.
If they're going to penalize people for errors that are below the
repeatability/accuracy of the scales, then they need to measure and
publish the error range for the scales that they are using. If not,
people are going to trust that the scales are accurate to the last
decimal place on the display: 1 pound.
Or do you expect each competitor to figure out how good the scales are
on their own? If I were in that position, I'd weigh my car 5 times on
friday afternoon, 5 times on friday night, 5 times saturday morning,
and 5 times just before I ran on Saturday. People might start to get
annoyed.
If a company made a scientific instrument that read out to 3 decimal
places but was only good to 2, their customers would crucify them,
unless there were a plaque on the front that said "+/- 0.005"
--
john@idsfa.net John Stimson
http://www.idsfa.net/~john/ HMC Physics '94
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