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by whatshisface 1534 days ago
Is 100 = 100.1 a hundred percent wrong or 0.1% wrong?
3 comments

Landing a plane 0.1% short on its journey is not great, say.
Landing a plane is always great. Ask any pilot.
Any landing that you can walk away from is a good landing. Any landing after which you can use the plane again is a great one.

A landing that meets neither of the above two criteria, much less so.

Remember: taking off is optional, but landing is mandatory.

> Remember: taking off is optional, but landing is mandatory.

This depends on how fast your plane can go.

Are you referring to one-way trips to space?
It depends on what your goal was
In the context where your measurements allow you to measure discrepancies a seventh of that error, that’s a huge error (for the purpose of THIS experiment). There might be some experiments where the difference doesn’t matter at all, or other experiments where the dependence is linear, so the answer also shifts by 0.1%. But the dependence could just as easily be some complicated nonlinear function which leads to a large discrepancy compared to the measurement precision.
While it would depend on the tolerance level of the particular situation, generally, 100 = 100,00 is way more wrong than 100 = 100.1