Okay, to make it easy, the numbers in the problem are 1, 3, 12, 693.645, 12, and 734. How many sig figs do I round the answer? I know it's usually with the least significant value, right? But would that be the 1 and only round to one sig fig? It's probably a really dumb question, but oh well.
2007-10-10 11:45:40 · 1 answers · asked by Kori E 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Mathematics
The least significant value here is the 0.005 from 693.645.
Also, you have to be careful with the term "significant figures" and precision. 693.645 has 6 significant figures, but 3 decimal digits of precision. Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_%28arithmetic%29
There are no simple rules for how many decimal places to keep or where to round. It depends on what you are trying to do and the operations you are performing.
But as a general rule, you don't want to lose information and you don't want to claim more precision than you really have. In this case I would probably round to 3 decimal digits (that is to the nearest 0.001)
2007-10-10 20:36:05 · answer #1 · answered by simplicitus 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋