No "common sense"?

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Let me put it this way. If you add more weight to the scale, then it should read a greater weight. If you take weight away, then should read a lower weight. And the weights it read should be reasonably related to the amount of weight added or removed.

For example, if you have fifty pounds on a scale and add five more pounds, then the scale should show something close to five more pounds. Ideally, it would show exactly five more pounds.

If you double the weight, it should read twice as much. If you remove half the weight, then it should read half as much.

As far as how accurate it needs to be depends on the use. If you are in a chemistry lab, you want the scale to be accurate to at least a fraction of a gram. If it isn't at least that accurate, then it is not reliable.

If you are weighing yourself, accuracy to within a couple of pounds might be sufficient. If it is off by 20 pounds, it isn't very reliable.

If you are weighing grain trucks, accuracy to withing 10 pounds might be fine. In that case, there are typically state inspectors who do put measured weights on the scale and the results had better be within their limits or the scale will not be certified.

I would not have thought of all of this but you're right. I should be able to remove the weight or add on weight and it should reflect that weight.



I get what you're saying now. I completely misread validity. Accuracy is a part of reliability is what you are saying. Accuracy does not have to be an exact, precise, singular, and atomic. It can include a range of values am I correct? Validity has nothing to do with obtaining accurate answers. Validity means we are testing what we're supposed to be testing for. For example, if we were using this type of scale to measure IQ or measure how much ram is in a computer it would be invalid am I correct? Am I at least on the right track of understanding this?

By the way, I have the same name as you.

Why is it rare to have discussions like this to be shown why one is wrong? Most people I have spoken to thus far will either call me a stupid idiot,make stupid jokes, yell at me, or ignore what I ask or say?

It's a great name, isn't it?

When I lived in the Houston area, people would often ask me if I played the guitar when they heard my name. I later found out that there is a well respected guitarist in Austin with the same name. But I'm two days older than him.

It really confused some people when I pointed out that I used to live in the house of Robert Earl Keen Jr and Lyle Lovett's Front Porch Song. They just knew I had to play the guitar after hearing that.

Actually, you made some good points. I had to think for a bit about the problem.

I'm quite often wrong about things or misunderstand some issues and greatly like a rational discussion to show me why I am wrong. Also, I enjoy the debate and when people start calling each other names and being rude to each other, that shuts down the debate really fast.

I have hardly anyone around where I live to discuss issues with so I really depend on forums like this.

A measuring device can be reliable (and therefore useful) without being accurate so long as the degree of error is known. This can happen if something is calibrated incorrectly. It can happen with cheap home scales such as mine, which consistently underweighs by 5 pounds. I realized this when I joined a gym with a professional grade scale (the same one as used in my doctor's office). When it first happened I was completely horrified to discover I was 5 pounds heavier at the gym than at home. I did briefly wonder if I had actually gained 5 pounds between home and the gym even though that's impossible since I don't eat breakfast until after I come home from the gym.

When I got home I weighed myself again on the home scale. The 5 pounds had disappeared. So it was the scale. I looked more closely at the scale when I wasn't stepping on it (something I had never done before) and saw that the marker line was below zero when it sat empty on the floor.

I repeated this comparison on several different days and found the same 5 pound difference. When I had a doctor's appointment, I intentionally weighed myself on the home scale right before going in so I could compare it to the doctor's proffesional scale. Same underwight of 5 pounds. So I concluded that my scale was calibrated wrong and would reliably underweigh by 5 pounds.

I don't know when this happened since I had the home scale for >10 years without ever checking it against a professional scale. Maybe it came that way out of the factory. Maybe it slowly uncalibrated because it is cheap. So I realize that if I keep it for more years, it may lose even more of its' calibration and won't be reliable anymore. But for now, I consider it an example of being innacurate yet reliable, which is why that first paragraph of cubedemon's made such sense to me.

You can't be that smart if, by the age of 52, you are finding your mother's assessment is still dead on.

Does a reliable measuring device have to have accuracy or not? I am confused on this? Is accurate based upon what we define as accurate? Can accuracy be within a range like eric says? It would seem so.

I've been told a few times that I too, lack common sense.

I am just like that! My Mum tell me all thh time that I'm clever but have little common sense. GUess it must be part of Aspergers.

I know that eric76 said that reliability shouldn't be confused with predictability, but in colloquial use, people really do use those terms interchangeably, as you did in the opening paragraph of your question. It's not just my scale which is reliably 5 pounds underweight. I've also heard people use it to refer to people who are always late or early by the same amount, thermostats which consistently give the wrong tempurature by the same amount and so on. In colloquial use, if something is innacurate in the exact same way every time, people still call it reliable.

Can accuracy be within a range as eric76 says? Yes. It all depends on what is being measured. The general rule is that the larger the amount, the larger the range can be. It is ok if my scale can only be accurate (or reliably innacurate) to the pound. But a pharmacist who is weighing drugs needs accuracy to fractions of a gram.

From an Aspie:

"Common sense is the all the prejudices we acquire by age 18" -Albert Einstein

What is a cooties, do you mean cookies?.

I also have not much common sense and also not that much theory of mind.
Actually I learned to understand single social cues very well, but I have huge difficulties putting the information correct together.

No I meant cooties.
It is an imaginary ailment that children made up so they could have a reason to pick on other children when they failed to find a legitimate reason to do so.
Also it is used to segregate boys from girls as it is usually caught from the opposite gender.

Via wikipedia.
Cooties is, in American childlore, a kind of infectious disease. The term may have originated with references to lice, fleas, and other parasites. A child is said to "catch" cooties through any form of bodily contact, proximity, or touching of an "infected" person or from a person of the opposite sex of the same age. Often the "infected" person is someone who is perceived as "different" and bears some kind of social stigma: of the opposite sex, disabled, someone who is shy or withdrawn, someone who has peculiar mannerisms, etc. The phrase is most commonly used by children aged 4–10; however, it is also used by many others older than 10

How to get some common sense?

Real simple:

(1) Learn from mistakes -- yours and others -- and do your bestest NOT to repeat making them over and over and over, etc.

(2) Read -- books and stories, like Aesop's Fables and James Thurber's "The Owl Who Was God", advice columns, advice forums/fora, etc. -- to see how other people did things or suggested how to do things.

(3) Think before doing or reacting and ask yourself, Is my thought/action going to cause harm?

(4) And adopt these two simple philosophies:

(a) "When in doubt, don't." -- Benjamin Franklin
(b) "When in doubt, tell the truth." -- Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens