In this GPS World article by the same name as this blog post, author David Doyle shares some of the expertise gained with 40+ years of service with the National Geodetic Survey. He addresses a common issue with the accuracy of modern GNSS survey techniques. With all of the amazingly accurate technology that is at our disposal for collecting location information to the nearest centimeter, we still commonly see the scenario in which "I got a cm, and you got a cm, but our centimeters differ by a meter." If the systems used for data collection are so capable, then all positional data should fit nicely with no discrepancies... but every surveyor knows this simply isn't the case. One example that I see regularly can be found in Google Earth, which is an incredibly useful tool, but as you review the latest available aerial imagery you may find offsets in the center stripes of highways where one image is improperly seamed to the next. This calls into question the accuracy of the entire system. Doyle reminds us of an important concept: the number of digits to the right of a decimal point has nothing to do with accuracy. So as data collection technology becomes more accurate and more accessible to the masses, education on how to use it correctly is a must.