3 ms·
If you have a material sample with measured length of 1cm ±0.5cm, and a measured mass of 3g±0.5g, then reporting 3.3333333333g/cm for mass per unit length is ju
by SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago
If you have a material sample with measured length of 1cm ±0.5cm, and a measured mass of 3g±0.5g, then reporting 3.3333333333g/cm for mass per unit length is just lying. It's between 0.14 and 0.6, so "about 0.3g/cm" is not lying, whereas "0.333333333333g/cm" is.
- mitthrowaway2 3y agoWhat do you think about 0.333 ± 0.222 g/cm?
- defrost 3y ago[flagged]
- SAI_Peregrinus 3y ago0.3 (-0.2+0.3) g/cm would be more correct. You've still got 3 significant figures when the inputs only had 1. Just don't lie, it's not that hard.
- mitthrowaway2 3y agoInteresting definition of a "lie". I don't think anything about that is inaccurate or untruthful. At best it could be called verbose, but yours is actually no shorter. Confidence intervals supersede significant figures in all respects, and now you've introduced a small but unnecessary bias that depends on the peculiarities of base 10.