BUS 215 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Significant Figures, Decimal Mark, Round-Off Error
4 Apr 2016
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Document Summary
To obtain the right answer, you need to use your calculator correctly and understand how to follow the rules for rounding based on significant digits. When using a calculator for arithmetic, be sure your calculator display setting shows at least 6 decimal places. Some calculators are preset with only 2 decimal places on display. This may cause you to lose precision when working with very small values. Learn the rules for significant digits (see next page). Just because the calculator or software will report a result with 10 decimal places does not mean you should report these. For example, if you round-off any intermediate answer to only two digits, you are discarding the information contained in the third digit, and as a result the your final answer might be incorrect ( round-off error ) When confirming your answer with back of book solutions, remember that you, your calculator, or your software, may be rounding slightly differently from each other.
