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Accuracy

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The general meaning of accuracy is the proximity of a value or a statistic to a reference value. More specifically, it measures the proximity of the estimator T of the unknown parameter θ to the true value of θ.

The accuracy of an estimator can be measured by the expected value of the squared deviation between T and θ, in other words:

$$ E \left[ (T-\theta)^2\right]\:. $$

Accuracy should not be confused with the term precision, which indicates the degree of exactness of a measure and is usually indicated by the number of decimals after the comma.

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© 2008 Springer-Verlag

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(2008). Accuracy. In: The Concise Encyclopedia of Statistics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-32833-1_2

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