Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
For example, 13 0 0 has three significant figures (and hence indicates that the number is precise to the nearest ten). Less often, using a closely related convention, the last significant figure of a number may be underlined; for example, "1 3 00" has two significant figures. A decimal point may be placed after the number; for example "1300."
Few simplifying assumptions are made, and when a number is needed, an answer with two or more significant figures ("the town has 3.9 × 10 3, or thirty-nine hundred, residents") is generally given. As in the examples above, the term "2nd order" refers to the number of exact numerals given for the imprecise quantity.
For example, 1300 x 0.5 = 700. There are two significant figures (1 and 3) in the number 1300, and there is one significant figure (5) in the number 0.5. Therefore, the product will have only one significant figure. When 650 is rounded to one significant figure the result is 700. For example, 1300 + 0.5 = 1301.
Typically the divisions mark a scale to a precision of two significant figures, and the user estimates the third figure. Some high-end slide rules have magnifier cursors that make the markings easier to see. Such cursors can effectively double the accuracy of readings, permitting a 10-inch slide rule to serve as well as a 20-inch model.
All of the significant digits remain, but the placeholding zeroes are no longer required. Thus 1 230 400 would become 1.2304 × 10 6 if it had five significant digits. If the number were known to six or seven significant figures, it would be shown as 1.230 40 × 10 6 or 1.230 400 × 10 6. Thus, an additional advantage of scientific notation is ...
A reading of 8,000 m, with trailing zeros and no decimal point, is ambiguous; the trailing zeros may or may not be intended as significant figures. To avoid this ambiguity, the number could be represented in scientific notation: 8.0 × 10 3 m indicates that the first zero is significant (hence a margin of 50 m) while 8.000 × 10 3 m indicates ...
But he made one significant change that went largely unnoticed by the medical community: he erased the clitoris. Dr. Carmine D. Clemente, the editor who followed Goss, is in his 80s. In a phone interview, he said that in his experience with Lea & Febiger, Gray’s storied American publisher, the editor of each edition was granted full editorial ...
In statistics, the 68–95–99.7 rule, also known as the empirical rule, and sometimes abbreviated 3sr, is a shorthand used to remember the percentage of values that lie within an interval estimate in a normal distribution: approximately 68%, 95%, and 99.7% of the values lie within one, two, and three standard deviations of the mean, respectively.