Accuracy vs. Precision: What's the Difference When Shooting?
What it is
Accuracy is how close your shots land to your actual point of aim — the bullseye. Precision is how close your shots land to each other, regardless of where that group happens to sit on the target. A tiny, tight group two inches left of the bullseye is highly precise but not very accurate. A wide, scattered group centered right on the bullseye is accurate on average but not precise. Most real groups are some mix of both, which is exactly why tracking only one number hides half the picture.
How we calculate it
Accuracy is the average distance from each shot to your point of aim. Precision is the average distance from each shot to the group's own center (the average position of all the shots in that group) — not to the point of aim. That's the key distinction: precision doesn't care where the group is, only how tight it is around its own middle.
Why it matters
The two numbers point to different fixes. A precise-but-inaccurate group usually means your sights are off, or you have a consistent bias (see the /learn pattern pages for what "consistently low and left" usually means) — a fix you make once, like an adjustment. An accurate-but-imprecise group means the fundamentals — grip, trigger press, follow-through — are inconsistent shot to shot, which only improves with repetition. Tracking both separately tells you which kind of problem you actually have before you spend a session trying to fix the wrong one.
See this measured on your own groups
Range Tracer calculates accuracy vs. precision automatically for every session you log.