An instrument's ability to indicate or record the actual value of a measured quantity is known as?

The term that describes an instrument's ability to indicate or record the actual value of a measured quantity is accuracy. Accuracy refers to how close a measured value is to the true value or the actual target value of the quantity being measured. It is essential for ensuring that measurements reflect the real-world conditions or physical phenomena accurately.

In instrumentation and controls, high accuracy is vital as it influences the reliability and credibility of the data collected for analysis. When an instrument is accurate, it provides confidence that the decisions based on that data are well-founded and effective in practical applications, such as monitoring and controlling system performance.

While precision, linearity, and reliability are important characteristics of instruments, they focus on different aspects. Precision deals with the repeatability of measurements, linearity addresses how well the instrument's output corresponds to a linear relationship with the input, and reliability pertains to the instrument's ability to perform consistently over time. None of these directly define the degree to which the instrument indicates the true value, which is why accuracy is the correct choice.