Margin of Error

You're seeing it when a financial model produces projections to two decimal places but the underlying assumptions carry plus-or-minus 25% uncertainty. The false precision masks a wide margin of error.

You're seeing it when an A/B test declares a winner with a small sample size. The margin of error is so wide that the "winning" variant could easily be worse — the test didn't have enough data to overcome the uncertainty.

Train your team to present ranges, not single numbers. "We expect 800 to 1,200 new users" is more honest and more useful than "we expect 1,000 new users." Build plans that work across the plausible range, not just at the midpoint.

Shotwell runs SpaceX operations where margin of error is literally a matter of life and death. Every launch trajectory, fuel calculation, and re-entry angle carries explicit margins of error, and mission planning accounts for the full range — not just the expected value. When SpaceX bids contracts, Shotwell builds cost estimates with stated uncertainty ranges rather than precise-seeming single numbers, then engineers operational buffers to absorb the variance. This culture of explicit margins extends to manufacturing timelines, supply chain planning, and hiring projections. Founders can learn from Shotwell's approach: state your margins openly, plan for the range, and never let false precision substitute for honest uncertainty. A plan that only works at the point estimate is a plan that will fail.