How many significant numbers are in the number 83000?

Answer 1

Significant numbers by definition do not include leading or trailing zeros which merely serve to show the scale of a number. Thus 83,000 and 83,000,000 and 830 all have the same number of significant numbers, 2. The two significant numbers are 8 and 3.

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Clarification: Trailing 0s AFTER the decimal point DO count unless they are there purely for conventional reasons (for example, two decimal places in most currencies). Such trailing 0s are indications of the precision of the number.

So, for example, 0.83 has 2 significant figures but 0.830 and 8.30 have 3 while 8.300 or 0.00008300 have 4.