What are significant figures-?

Answer 1

When a number is written in scientific notation, the digits that do not appear are not significant. The rest are significant figures. For example, when you convert 0.0003102 to scientific notation, it is 3.102 X 10-4. Therefore the zeros before the 3 are not significant.

The 3 significant figures implies to all digits around it, regardless of before and after the decimal point. 8.00 has 3 sig.figs. This is because of the 2 zeroes after the decimal point. When you have 30 zeroes after the decimal point, such as 3.000000000000000000000000000000, you have 31 significant figures. 1.23 has 3 sig.figs. This applies to all questions, if needed.

The amount of figures given in an answer where you begin with approximates of numbers. The answers should not be more precise than the original measurements. This would lead to a misleading answer, and thus significant figures were created to show an accurate approximation of your answer.

The idea of significant figures (sig figs or sf), also called significant digits (sig digs) is a method of expressing error in measurement.

The most significant digit is the "first" digit of a number (the left-most non-zero digit). Similarly, the least significant digit is the "last" digit of a number (sometimes, but not always, the right-most digit). A number is called more significant because it carries more weight. In the decimal number system (base 10), the weight of each digit to the left increases by a multiple of 10, and conversely the weight of each digit to the right decreases by a multiple of 10. A similar thing happens in the binary (base 2) number system - see most significant bit.

Sometimes the term "significant figures" is used to describe some rules-of-thumb, known as significance arithmetic, which attempt to indicate the propagation of errors in a scientific experiment or in statistics when perfect accuracy is not attainable or not required. Scientific notation is often used when expressing the significant figures in a number.

The concept of significant figures originated from measuring a value and then estimating one degree below the limit of the reading; for example, if an object, measured with a ruler marked in millimeters, is known to be between six and seven millimeters and can be seen to be approximately 2/3 of the way between them, an acceptable measurement for it could be 6.6 mm or 6.7 mm, but not 6.666666... mm as a recurring decimal. This rule is based upon the principle of not implying more precision than can be justified when measurements are taken in this manner. Teachers of engineering courses have been known to deduct points when scoring papers if excessive significant figures are given in a final answer.

Each of the digits of a number that are used to express it to the required degree of accuracy, starting from the first nonzero digit.

Significant figures (also called significant digits) can also refer to a crude form of error representation based around significant figure rounding.

Significant figures are digits that show the number of units in a measurement expressed in decimal notation.

Answer 2

The significant figures of a number are those digits that carry meaning contributing to its precision.

Answer 3

Significant figures are the figures having a meaning in a measurement.