However, contrary to the trend of the past several decades, in many new situations that are occurring today, allowing for imprecision ― for messiness―may be a positive feature, not a shortcoming.
By the nineteenth century, France had developed a system of precisely defined units of measurement to capture space, time, and more, and had begun to get other nations to adopt the same standards. ( ① ) Just half a century later, in the 1920s, the discoveries of quantum mechanics forever destroyed the dream of comprehensive and perfect measurement. ( ② ) And yet, outside a relatively small circle of physicists, the mindset of humankind’s drive to flawlessly measure continued among engineers and scientists. ( ③ ) In the world of business it even expanded, as the precision-oriented sciences of mathematics and statistics began to influence all areas of commerce. ( ④ ) As a tradeoff for relaxing the standards of allowable errors, one can get a hold of much more data. ( ⑤ ) It isn’t just that “more is better than some,” but that, in fact, sometimes “more is greater than better.”