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lws@comm.wang.com (Lyle Seaman) 
Replied to my note of:
>
>>Also a note on accuracy:
>> 
>>    1%  would be 864 seconds a day or 14 minutes 24 seconds
>>   .1%  would be 86  seconds a day or  1 minute  26 seconds
>>   .01% would be 8.6 seconds a day
>>   1 second a day is 1/86400 or 1 in almost 1 part in one hundred thousand.

>>How many scientific instruments can boast that accuracy?

With:


>Well, my free Disneyworld watch, for one.
>My free Grimace watch from McDonald's, for another.

Funny, my "Swiss Army Watch" does not. If you LOOK AT THE SPECS most digital
watches do not claim to be accurate to one second a day.  Most of the are,
however.  The manufactures don't check them for accuracy, (the same with 
clock crystals).

A friend of mine's father-in-law was presented with a gift in the early 
1980's. It was a "cheap" (under $10) LED watch that was accurate to less
than a second a month.  It was not any different than the others made in
the same batch except someone bothered to test it and found out it
was that accurate. Obviously some others in the same batch were accurate
to one second a month, some probably were accurate to one second a year, 
and some were (in)accurate to a minute a day or more.

The manufacturers only guarentee accuracy within a range. The accuracy of a 
particular piece within that range is somewhat random, although you can 
compute the probability of it being a within a specific value.
-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson
(215) 242-8712
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