Suppose I am working on a problem and I wish to calculate the density of something. I measure the mass to be m = 24.5 grams and the volume is V = 10 cm 3. In this case the density would be: ALERT!

The first two significant figures are 5 and 2. As the next digit is 4 the 2 stays as it is. Therefore 5246 rounds to 5200 to 2 significant figures. (Notice that we must put in zeros to keep the number ...

Leave the digit the same if the next digit is less than 5 (this is called rounding down) but increase it by 1 if the next digit is 5 or more (this is called rounding up). The rounded value must be a ...

IT is a well-known fact that most numbers in statistical tables start with a small digit. For example, in population tables almost one third of the entries begin with the digit 1. The same holds true ...

Who’s bigger: Washington or Lincoln? Hitler or Napoleon? Charles Dickens or Jane Austen? That depends on how you look at it. When we set out to rank the significance of historical figures, we decided ...