Ah, Scurvy and you are two peas in a pod!
Did you ever study the meaning of significant figures in chemistry, physics or math? You use numbers to indicated the precision of the measurement. Suppose you have a sonar that is accurate to plus or minus 10. Then the number 50 means somewhere between 40 and 60. Numbers, then represent not a precise point but a range. Identifying your error envelope and mitigating that so it has no bearing on your result is what real precision is all about. It means that you realize that 43 is a fictitious number and needs to be rounded to the nearest ten to account for the known error of the device.
Real precision is recognizing that real error exists, quantifying that error and changing your methods so that these known (and perhaps some unknown) errors have no effect on the boom.
Error cannot be eliminated all the time. Our methods can render that irrelevant.