Significant figures and decimal place by Nathaniel

Significant figures and decimal place

Rules of significant figures

- Trailing zeros or the final zero in a whole number or a decimal place is considered a significant figure. e.g: 0.0420, 0.4300, 430  (numbers in red are significant figures) 

• Zeros in some cases can be considered as not a significant figure. e.g: express 34235 as 1 significant figure. The answer will be 30000. Reason behind why we round down is because anything below 5 round it down while any number 5 and above we would round up. (See more in the decimal place section.)

Rules of Decimal place

- If a number is above 5 then we round up the number if the number is 4 an below we round down. e.g: express 110 to the nearest hundreds and since the 1 at the tens position is below 5 we round it down.