On Sat, 18 Jun 2016 09:49 am, Ian Kelly wrote: > If I tell you that the speed of light is 300,000,000 m/s, do you think > that measurement has 9 significant digits? If you do, then you would be > wrong.
Hmmm. If I tell you that some physical phenomenon [let's call it the speed of light] is 299,999,999 m/s, how many significant digits would I be using? What if I tell you that it's 300,000,001 m/s? What if the figure to nine significant digits *actually is* three followed by eight zeroes? For all that it is in widespread use, I think the concept of "significant figures" is inherently ambiguous. -- Steven -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
