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You can't make your meter add an extra digit (unless you can turn the dial to a different scale). The digit is lost. But of course it isn't a big deal to lose
by alisonkisk 6y ago
You can't make your meter add an extra digit (unless you can turn the dial to a different scale). The digit is lost.
But of course it isn't a big deal to lose that dgiti because a trailing digit is 0.1 as much error fraction when the leading digit is 9 vs 1.
- ska 6y agoI'm not sure what you mean here, probably because I worded it poorly. Of course your instrument will have different scales, and you should use the appropriate one. But the measurement was done with a number of significant figures, this is independent of how you write it. Nothing is "lost", if measurement had 2 sig figs it is 0.99, if it had 3 it was 0.990. Or 0.991 or whatever. Am I missing something?
- taeric 6y agoYou skipped the example. They said if your device measures 1.00, it is three significant digits. If it measures 0.01, it is one significant digit. From the same measuring device. So it is counter intuitive that the measurement just going down below 1 somehow causes it to "lose" significant digits. It didn't lost precision, though. Just the number of digits that are significant.
- heavenlyblue 6y ago0 is also a digit
- taeric 6y agoI'm not sure what you are saying. 0.01 has just one significant digit. Consider you have a 10 meter stick with centimeter meetings. This can give 0.01 as the smallest measure. A number with 1 significant digit. It can also give up to 10.00, a number with 4 significant digits. In both, the precision of the measurement is to a centimeter.