Yet this report, like so many, adopts a preposterous pretence of precise measurement which immediately arouses suspicion.

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Technology is allowing us to use better tools for more precise measurement.

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"As the most precise measurement of the cosmic ray positron flux to date, these results show clearly the power and capabilities of the AMS detector, " Ting said, according to the CERN statement.

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That famous atomic clock, after all, may first have sprung from nothing more than intellectual curiosity, but it must also have occurred to the Pentagon that precise measurement might have some military use.

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When it comes to the hedge fund industry, where billions of dollars are made and lost each year due in part to the accuracy of information, precise measurement and reporting on the scale of the industry itself appears frustratingly imprecise and hence unimportant.

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Suddenly we not only had a new form of measurement, reducing events to the binary combination of 1s and 0s, but a pathway (ultimately described by Moore's Law) to making that measurement evermore precise.

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