What is the result of the following, accounting for significant digits...
574.34' * 1.9' ?
Yes, the preceding are approximate numbers, i.e., they are measurements, not counts.
Stephen
1091.2
FYI...from Gen Chem I...a long time ago...
Any digit that is not zero is significant. Zeros between nonzero digits are significant. Zeros to the left of the first nonzero digit are not significant. If a number is greater than 1, then all the zeros written to the right of the decimal point count as significant figures. For numbers that do not contain decimal points, the trailing zeros may or may not be significant.
1091 +/- 29
> What is the result of the following, accounting for significant digits...
>
> 574.34' * 1.9' ?
1.1 x 10^3
Kent
We agree (which doesn't happen all that often)!
You stated it much better than I did (and more ACCURATELY).
🙂
Loyal
> What is the result of the following, accounting for significant digits...
>
> 574.34' * 1.9' ?
>
> Yes, the preceding are approximate numbers, i.e., they are measurements, not counts.
>
> Stephen
Two Sig Figs
I like Loyal's answer best, although it could be improved by saying if that is std dev or some other confidence interval.
I've always hated the convention of inferring precision from the number of digits because it doesn't really express it well.
11.000 * 9.0 = 99. called two significant figures
11.000 * 10.1 = 111. called three significant figures, but there isn't reallyl that much difference - they are both really +/- 0.55
And there is the problem that you don't know if numbers like 1200 have 2, 3, or 4 significant digits.
