Approximate inverse systems of metric compacta are introduced and studied. The bonding maps in these systems commute only up to certain controlled values. With every such system X = (X a , ε a , p aa ' > A) are associated a limit space X and projections p a : X -> X a A compact Hausdorff space X has covering dimension dim X < n if and only if it can be obtained as the limit of an approximate inverse system of compact polyhedra of dimension < n. The analogous statement for usual inverse systems is known to be false.
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