significant digits

I got into a long argument this afternoon with a couple people who are
supposed to know this.

I said they were wrong, but on the slight chance that I'm wrong, I
thought I would solicit some opinions.

The number 0.0137 has how many significant digits? I say 3, the others
say 4.

I don't count ANY leading zeroes with no regard to the decimal point,
they count every digit after the decimal point.

I say that

1.37
0.137
0.0137
0.00137
0.000137

all have 3 significant digits.

I'm correct about this, aren't I?
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: How to detect a doubles significant digits
    ... "significant digits", then go from there. ... Since I think he mentioned something about predicting how much space it will take to print out, my suggestion is to run through whatever printing routines there are and get a string out, the measure the string, as anything else will likely be wrong. ... Zeroes to the right are significant, ...
    (comp.lang.python)
  • Re: How to detect a doubles significant digits
    ... > significant digits, as the term is usually meant. ... > to the right are significant, not zeroes to the left. ... many of the zeros to the right are significant. ... Prev by Date: ...
    (comp.lang.python)
  • Re: how many digits can "number" have?
    ... Note that it's 15 *significant digits*. ... but the ones at the trailing end will be zeroes. ... David Biddulph ...
    (microsoft.public.excel.misc)
  • significant digits
    ... How do I make the result of a calculation to exactly n significant digits. ... The "format" commands are not flexible in this regard. ...
    (comp.soft-sys.matlab)
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