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Hi guest, it is good that you are trying to get this sorted.

Significant figures can be quite confusing. Mostly if you use your logic rather than a calculator, you will get it correct.

 

I was about to say that the answer is wrong. But it is not.

You have to understand significant figures, I would be dubious about trusting a sig fig calc, but this time they are right.

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Loci, thanks for answering but I am afraid you are a bit confused. The 8 and the 9 have absolutely nothing to do with the rounding.

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Let's look at this:

 

By itself 4.337 has 4 significant figures. That is true.

and taken alone 81.7128 does have 6 significant figures, that is true too.

If we multiplied the 2 the answer would have 4 significant figures. That is true too.

 

However, we are adding.

When considered together they both have a significant 10s value. For the first number it is 0, and for the second number it is 8.

So the digits for both are significant up to the thousandth place. When added the significant answer will be 89.050 the value in the thousandths place will continue to be significant.

 

 

Here are 2 more examples.

You have a piece of wood that is 5 metres long and another piece that is 5 mm long.

If you just add then you get a length of 5.005m long.

This is nonsense.

Both the original values have 1 significant figure so it makes sense for the final answer to have only 1 significant figure.

So your resultant length of wood is 5 metres long.

 

However:

You have a piece of wood that is 5.0002 metres long and another piece that is 5 mm long.

If you just add then you get a length of 5.0052m long.

BUT

Both the original values are significant to the nearest mm so it makes sense for the final answer to be significant to the nearest mm

So the resultant significant answer is 5.005

Apr 25, 2020

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