There's a small book called "Errors of Observation and Their Treatment", ISBN 978-94-011-6928-8, which seemed dull in class but it emphasized being able to expr

There's a small book called "Errors of Observation and Their Treatment", ISBN 978-94-011-6928-8, which seemed dull in class but it emphasized being able to express and defend a numerical result as x +/- y . I did that thereafter and it made a lot of difference in my understanding of the result. It isn't done by many engineers any more, and I always look with suspicion on results claiming absurd precision. There isn't so much understanding there and people who engage in it are much more likely to submit work with multiple order-of-magnitude errors. They do not -know- the answer, they accept the line on the screen un-critically.