[ale] [OT] Help with Significant Figures Explaination

[Jeff Lightner]

You might talk about how "significant" the figures become in space.
What appears to be "insignificant" at the start of a launch to send
something to Jupiter for example becomes greatly "significant" in error
by the end of the trip due to magnification over distance.   It would be
embarrassing to set your multi-billion dollar satellite to do a drive by
on Jupiter only to see it instead miss it by nearly as many miles as the
dollars that were spent.

Also "significant" in numbers doesn't always have to be that far right
of the decimal.  Most accountants spend more time worrying about why
they're off a penny (0.01 dollars) than why they're off $3,000,000.00
simply because it usually a lot harder to find that penny.  Why worry
about a penny?  Because if you're off a penny it indicates there is an
error and you have no way of knowing whether the error is just a penny
one way or if it is instead a variance of $3,000,000.00 one way and
$3,000,000.01 the other way.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
Robert Reese~
Sent: Friday, October 17, 2008 12:07 AM
To: ale at ale.org
Subject: Re: [ale] [OT] Help with Significant Figures Explaination

Why not contrast them to "insignificant figures"?  Sometimes teaching
the opposite works just as well, or even better, than teaching the
topic.

Cheers,
Robert~

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