Accuracy In Knowledge

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“In knowledge there is always a trade-off between accuracy and simplicity.” Evaluate this statement in relation to two areas of knowledge. Candidate Name: Akpotohwo Onyekachi Temiloluwa Centre Number: 003295 Candidate Number: 0003 Word Count: 1521 Knowledge is a body of justified truths. It could be simple – plain and easy to comprehend – and/or accurate – correct, precise and certain. So when I encountered the statement “In knowledge, there is always a trade-off between simplicity and accuracy”, my initial thoughts were, definitely, there is a trade-off between simplicity and accuracy. Then again, I thought, it may be true that there is a trade-off between simplicity and accuracy, but is this usually the case all the time? The use of …show more content…

A model is a simplified representation of knowledge. Models use simplification and representation to enhance ease of understanding; they can help individuals gain knowledge, hence, we use models to make schedules, predict the weather, the future population, the economic situation of a country, and even the shape of something we have not seen (shapes and bond angles of covalent molecules). Models definitely play a vital role in our daily lives from waking up in the morning to knowing if you need an umbrella from the daily forecast down to knowing which books to take to school from your timetable. The most significant issue remains to what extent are models an accurate representation of reality? Basically, I will be exploring the accuracy of simplicity in the areas of natural and human sciences, with focus on the use of language and …show more content…

Simplification reduces and changes meaning by narrowing the scope of a knower thus altering understanding. In the process of simplification, we end up excluding valuable information. In O Levels, we were conditioned to think that electrons had fixed positions in their respective atoms because we were given a simple model of an atom. But as higher level students, at the verge of entry into the university, we now know that electrons don’t actually have fixed positions in an atom, they move because they are wave-like and one can only predict approximately, the position of an electron in an atom after applying various theories. In this example, we see that the simple model of an atom excluded vital information that could widen our scope of understanding of the concept of sub-atomic particles. Some people believe that the ultimate goal of science is to discover a theory so general that it gives a complete understanding of nature, the theory of everything. As far as we know, science has been able to conclude on two theories that can explain almost any natural concept; the theory of general relativity and the quantum field theory. However, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem suggests that proposing a theory of everything could be a fatal failure because such a theory, explained in a language rich enough to express elementary facts about natural concepts, cannot be proved to be free

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