There is an art (and a science) to numerical precision that seems lost in software, writing and conversation. The trick to appropriate precision is understanding accuracy. This all falls under the banner of numeracy.
For example, I just received a confirmation of a cinema booking that gave the time of the film in HH:MM:SS format. The site lists programme times in HH:MM. They normally start trailers within a few minutes of the advertised time. To list seconds is an innumerate and false promise.
I sometimes receive notifications that I can expect a delivery in a 2-hour window such as "between 12:07 and 14:07".
To quote to the minute shows a failure of understanding of what an approximate range is, as well traffic and logistics.
It's a 2-hour window of imprecision. Quoting to the minute shows a deep lack of understanding. Quoting to 5-minute intervals is just about acceptable. To 10- or 15-minute is more appropriate significance. But honestly, in this case, to the hour is just fine.
@xris That is slightly different and is a source of another line of rants of mine.
First of all, when you are dealing with past events, they are known and are not estimates. Reporting them with both precision and accuracy is desirable. Excessive precision is quirky, but not wrong; reporting an estimate of a future event with false precision is wrong.
OTOH reporting a past event with poor approximation invariably annoying and often wrong (both in its model and its implementation).
Kevlin Henney
Chris