Instruments are tricky to make and maintain. Unless there is a huge error in them it is very difficult to realize that something is wrong with them. For example, the weighing machine at your grocer has a slight error. It shows 1 kg of rice as 1.050 kg. Unless you are taking a huge quantity of rice, that error will never be caught by you or the grocer for that matter. Most of the gadgets and appliances we use are commercially mass built. Approximation is inherently built in them. Accuracy is always given a second priority in them. Let’s take a look at some of the gadgets you use every day that are not as reliable as you think they are. Cellphones lie about how much charge they hold Your phone never charges to a 100 percent. Because a fully charged battery degrades faster. That’s why the phones actually only charge until 95% and stop. But the phones cannot show you that it has charged only 95%, because then you will never plug it out. But it is for the phone’s safety, so chill out.

GPS routing algorithms lands people in all the wrong places.

GPS systems are accurate when you are standing still. It starts screwing up when the navigation starts. Routing and rerouting is based on computer algorithms and not just the satellite feed and hence there have been cases where people have lost their way and even their lives because the map took them to a wrong place altogether.

If only you could take a pinch of salt with the gadget readings then life would have been sorted.