Too little
The point that sells
“Ten minutes saved. That is the number people will remember.”
The favorable end of a conditional estimate becomes an apparent guarantee.
Exactitude
Preserve a report's qualifications when presenting its findings to people who cannot inspect it themselves.
Dispositional fidelity to the particulars and limits of what one observes or represents.
Exactitude carries the particulars and limits of a finding faithfully into what one says about it. In public argument, a range can become a point, an assumption can disappear, and an estimate can quietly become a promise. The disposition is to preserve whichever details govern the meaning, even when a smoother claim would be easier to sell.
Exactitude gives a public figure with its meaning still attached
Your campaign presentation gives the proposed service change a single bright marker: TEN MINUTES SAVED. The assessment estimates five to ten minutes per journey, assuming the connection runs on time. You replace the triumphant dot with a band and keep that assumption beside it. The marker had booked the whole stage for itself; it now has to share. You can still recommend the proposal, but the public should hear the estimate the assessment actually made.
Finding the balance in Exactitude
A councillor is tempted to present the favorable end of an estimated range as a firm result.
A fitting response
The finding carried faithfully
“The estimate is five to ten minutes per journey if the connection runs on time.”
Range, unit and assumption remain attached to the claim.
Pursued too far
Precision beyond the evidence
“Call it 7.500 minutes, so nobody can accuse us of being vague.”
Extra digits disguise the uncertainty instead of representing it.
A later measurement may support a different or more precise account. Update the claim when the evidence warrants it; a range is not automatically more exact than a single number.
What Exactitude makes possible
People can decide how much weight to place on an estimate when they can see its uncertainty and conditions. A faithful account also gives later reviewers a usable comparison: they can ask whether the connection performed as assumed and whether the expected saving occurred. The public argument becomes answerable to the finding it cites.
Exactitude in ordinary life
A group statistic
Keep the period and group being counted attached to a percentage.
A quoted sentence
Check whether cutting the next phrase changes the speaker’s meaning.
Nearby virtues, different work
Candor
Candor supplies the readiness to state an inconvenient limit. Exactitude determines how that limit must be represented.
Honesty
Honesty rejects deception. Exactitude also resists a misleading summary produced through carelessness rather than intent.
Exactitude and its counterfeits
The decorative footnote
A hidden qualification counterfeits Exactitude when the prominent claim still misleads. Put the controlling distinction where readers encounter the claim.
Pedantry without repair
Correcting a harmless label while leaving the enlarged finding untouched is a counterfeit of Exactitude. Start with the detail that changes the meaning.
How to cultivate Exactitude
Ask which omitted detail would change a reasonable reader’s conclusion.
Keep the unit, scope and period with the figure during each handoff.
Read the summary on its own before checking it against the fuller source.
Try it today
Choose one statistic you intend to repeat and restore a missing scope, period or unit.
Questions worth returning to
- Am I reporting an estimate, an observed result or a promise?
- Which assumption would most change the meaning of this figure?
Quotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
The honour of this public benefit has also been ascrib’d to me, but it belongs truly to that gentleman. I did but follow his example, and have only some merit to claim respecting the form of our lamps, as differing from the globe lamps we were at first supply’d with from London.
Benjamin Franklin · The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin · Part III
The preceding sentence names John Clifton, whose example helped introduce street lighting. Franklin separates that contribution from his own lamp design. Exactitude likewise keeps distinct what the source warrants and what the advocate would prefer to claim.
Their machinery is good, when the proper tests are prescribed for the qualifications of officers, the proper rules for their promotion; when the business is conveniently distributed among those who are to transact it, a convenient and methodical order established for its transaction, a correct and intelligible record kept of it after being transacted; when each individual knows for what he is responsible, and is known to others as responsible for it; when the best-contrived checks are provided against negligence, favoritism, or jobbery in any of the acts of the department.
John Stuart Mill · Considerations on Representative Government · Chapter II
“Their machinery” refers to executive departments. Mill ties intelligible records to assigned responsibility: a public estimate needs an account another person can examine, including how its range was obtained.
I find, since reading over the foregoing Narrative, that I have, in several instances, spoken in such a tone and manner, respecting religion, as may possibly lead those unacquainted with my religious views to suppose me an opponent of all religion. To remove the liability of such misapprehension, I deem it proper to append the following brief explanation.
Frederick Douglass · Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave · Appendix
Douglass introduces his distinction between slaveholding religion and the Christianity he professes. The correction preserves the full severity of his criticism while defining its object precisely; exact scope need not weaken a strong statement.
In common language we speak of a generation as something possessed of a kind of exact unity, with all its parts and members one and homogeneous. Yet very plainly it is not this. It is a whole, but a whole in a state of constant flux.
John Morley · On Compromise · Chapter V
Morley examines the different ages and outlooks gathered under one collective word. His example shows how a convenient unit can conceal important variation, as a single bright marker conceals the estimate’s range.
But he has no right to mislead others who have less access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that "our fathers who framed the government under which we live" were of the same opinion—thus substituting falsehood and deception for truthful evidence and fair argument.
Lincoln distinguishes an opponent’s present argument from the historical view claimed for its support. Readers who cannot check the record depend on that distinction, just as constituents depend on a faithful account of the estimate being cited.
Therefore a superior man considers it necessary that the names he uses may be spoken appropriately, and also that what he speaks may be carried out appropriately.
Confucius · The Analects · Book XIII, chapter III, section 7 · Translated by James Legge
In the discussion of governing through correct names, the saying connects an appropriate description with action that can carry it out. Calling the assessment a conditional estimate preserves that connection for the people deciding what to support.
As a general rule, every executive function, whether superior or subordinate, should be the appointed duty of some given individual. It should be apparent to all the world who did every thing, and through whose default any thing was left undone.
John Stuart Mill · Considerations on Representative Government · Chapter XIV
Mill argues for identifiable responsibility in administration. Exact records make a public claim traceable to the work and the responsible role, without turning every system failure into a hunt for personal blame.
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