This morning reading the first pages of Cookbook di SpatiaLite I came across the following lines:
Conclusions: There are no exact measurements.
But this is not not at all surprising in the physical and natural sciences: every measured value is intrinsically affected by errors and approximations. And each calculated value will be inexorably affected by rounding and truncation errors. So Absolutely exact numbers simply do not exist in the real world: you must be aware that you can only have more accurate values. or less approximate. But at least, you can make sure you reduce those approximations as best you can.
Reading them made me feel One of my work experiences came to mind. The customer complained that on the elevation profiles there was an error of 8mm for each meter. I wasted time, quite a bit, explaining that the error he had found (percentage relative error 0.8%) could depend on many factors: the precision of the GPS he had used for the surveys, the DEM used for determining the lengths of the profiles, etc… The zero error he wanted was impossible.
I remember that about that experience, what I found really strange was actually explaining to the customer( who defined himself as a great researcher competent in many fields of science [I call them all-rounders]) the existence of error.
Reading those lines of the Cookbook made me feel like A smile escaped but at the time for me that situation was one of the many headache-inducing situations I had to face with that client. Life experiences.
