Earlier this year, my buddy, Naresh, grilled me about all things archery. He'd gone shooting with some of his friends who owned bows and found it piqued his interest enough to get kitted out with his own gear. We started on the basic mechanics and technical minutiae of peak weight, holding weight, draw length, and arrow stiffness. I also gave him the locations of several public archery ranges that I'd used in the past and gave him stern instructions to zero in his bow at one of these places rather than endanger his neighbors and their pets by taking his first shots in his back yard.
A few weeks passed and I got another call from Naresh asking to go shooting. I hadn't picked up my bow in years, but his sudden zeal sparked my latent fervor for the sport. We met at my favorite range and started sending shafts downrange. My time away from my trusty old bow showed, and my first few shots were fairly erratic. As the day went on, muscle memory returned and my shots started to converge. As for Naresh, I discovered he was a pretty good archer. He'd been putting in the work and practicing on his own for weeks and had diligently soaked up all the technical training that YouTube could give him on the subject.
After a few rounds we discussed the results at the target. His arrows were clustered around the bullseye, but they weren't necessarily a tight grouping (lower left in below image). I had a different issue - my arrows were tightly clustered in a single spot, but they were to the left of the center ring (upper right target in below image). In other words, he was highly accurate while I was highly precise. Neither of us had both.
According to my 7th grade English teacher, Mrs. Marti, in this context, accurate and precise are adjectives describing our shots. Although they sound similar, they are not synonyms. As it relates to archery, accuracy is how close you are to your designated target and precision is how close consecutive shots are to each other.
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