Decimal arithmatic, was Re: Python GUI app to impress the boss?

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

Brian Quinlan fed this fish to the penguins on Wednesday 02 October 
2002 12:48 am:

>>         When I took science classes, I'd have been dinged a few
>>         points
> if
>> I turned in 0.035 -- the rule was to report results to the same
>> significance as the inputs.
>> 
>>         0.7 * 0.05 => 0.0 in those science classes.
> 
> I'll be that you were really taught to answer 0.04
> 
> Otherwise I fear for your scientific education :-)
> 
        I suspect those classes were rigged where all measurements were to the 
same significance (not necessarily decimal places). 123000 * 0.00321 => 
1.23E5 * 3.21E-3 -> 3.95E2 -> 395

        So yes, on that basis, both 0.7 and 0.05 are 1 signicant digit, giving 
0.04 to one significant digit.

        Then again, when I was taking those classes, I ran a slipstick and was 
thereby automatically limited to ~2.5 significant digits (depending on 
which end of the stick).

        My math instructor of the time actually started the year off with a 
declaration that answers only needed to be to that significance -- his 
background would have been slipstick. Calculators were too expensive 
for us poor folk...

        Nowadays the calculator is lunch money, getting a good slipstick is 
two+ weeks of lunch.

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