What is the difference between decimal places and significant figures

This to me seems like 2 decimal places. However the answer was incorrect. It was correct. I know I'm being knit-picky but I genuinely just want to know your thoughts on this.

Would you call this 3 decimal places and 2 significant figures, or 2 decimal places and 2 significant figures. In the context of the assignment it doesn't matter a whole lot but I still think he should have written 2 significant figures.

Since the results must be independent of representation and nobody would argue about the number of significant figures or decimal places here, this is the way to go for me. I received some chemistry education both in the US and Germany.

Unfortunately, my experience is that in Germany these two concepts are often confused, even on university level and by lecturers. All high school level books on Chemistry I looked at in the US contained a section on this and were clear and adamant.

There's no room for my two-pence on the matter. Pick out a random sampling of textbooks on Google Books, or even the Wikipedia article, and you can find the distinction clear as day, e. If we're being generous, maybe the problem was originally written to have the answer 0. I have since a long time a non-professional interest in numerics and the answer is unequivocal: You and TAR86 are right, the given answer is wrong. Sign up to join this community.

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Learn more. Decimal places vs significant figures Ask Question. Asked 4 years ago. Active 4 years ago. Viewed 2k times. What's your 2 pence on the matter? Improve this question. Patrick Moloney Patrick Moloney 1 1 gold badge 7 7 silver badges 20 20 bronze badges. The ideas are straightforward, but the details can be tricky. To round this number to 2 d. As this is less than 5 the previous digit remains the same.

All the following digits are discarded, to give an answer of 7. To round the number to 3 d. To round this to 2 d. That means decides that 9 needs to be rounded up by 1 to the number As this is a 2-digit number, the 0. The answer is 0. This rounding method is exactly the same as that used for decimal places. Search Close. Back to blog. Decimal places The method for rounding a number is as follows: For the number of decimal places stated, count that number of digits to the right of the decimal and underline it.

Example 1 Take the number 7. Example 2 Take the number 0.