Hey, when we solve for significant figures, why do we completely get rid of the remaining decimals even though hey have more accurate information?
Ex. 1.23*4.84=5.9532 but we would make it 5.95 based on Sig figs, even though those last two decimals are closer to the answer. Why is this? I know it’s less accurate, though it seems like we’re losing valuable accuracy (even if it’s not perfect, it should be closer)
In: Mathematics
Significant figure is a way to estimate measurement accuracy. The question is not what the math says, but how sure you are of your measurement. 1.1 implies you have the measurement correct within 0.05 units. A measurement of 1 millimeter implies correctness within 0.5 millimeters. Doing math on the numbers doesn’t change the error. So we keep the number of significant digits the same to estimate error.
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