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If you rephrase your examples in scientific notation: 1.23456x10^1 and
1.23456x10^2 and 1.23456x10^-3 you can see that in each case the number of
sig figs is six. A more ambiguous case is 12,345,600. Does this have 8 sig
figs or are the two zeros there just to locate the decimal? If written as
1.23456700x10^7 then it's clear that it has 8.
HTH
-- Meg
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Posada [SMTP:jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com]
> Sent: Monday, November 13, 2000 11:51 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Significant digits
>
> Hi, guys...I've go a developer that is insisting that the following
> statement is accurate:
>
> "All conversion rates are processed and displayed to six significant
> digits. E.g. 12.3456 or 123.456 or 0.00123456."
>
> My contention is that the last number is displayed to eight
> significant digits and that six digits would be 0.001234.
>
> Who is right?
>
>
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