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For example, 13 0 0 has three significant figures (and hence indicates that the number is precise to the nearest ten). Less often, using a closely related convention, the last significant figure of a number may be underlined; for example, "1 3 00" has two significant figures. A decimal point may be placed after the number; for example "1300."
Under these circumstances, all the significant figures go into expressing b. For example, if the precision is 15 figures, and these two numbers, b and the square root, are the same to 15 figures, the difference will be zero instead of the difference ε. A better accuracy can be obtained from a different approach, outlined below.
This template has two different functions dependent on input. If only one parameter is given the template counts the number of significant figures of the given number within the ranges 10 12 to 10 −12 and −10 −12 to −10 12.
For example, in pharmacy, trailing zeros are omitted from dose values to prevent misreading. However, trailing zeros may be useful for indicating the number of significant figures, for example in a measurement. In such a context, "simplifying" a number by removing trailing zeros would be incorrect.
This gives from 6 to 9 significant decimal digits precision. If a decimal string with at most 6 significant digits is converted to the IEEE 754 single-precision format, giving a normal number, and then converted back to a decimal string with the same number of digits, the final result should match the original string. If an IEEE 754 single ...
For example, the constant π may be defined as the ratio of the length of a circle's circumference to its diameter. The following list includes a decimal expansion and set containing each number, ordered by year of discovery.
See Significant figures § Arithmetic.) More sophisticated methods of dealing with uncertain values include interval arithmetic and affine arithmetic. Interval arithmetic describes operations on intervals. Intervals can be used to represent a range of values if one does not know the precise magnitude, for example, because of measurement errors.
For example, a billion is represented as 13 characters (1,000,000,000) in decimal format, but is only 3 characters (10 9) when expressed in exponential format. A trillion is 17 characters in decimal, but only 4 (10 12) in exponential. Values that vary dramatically can be represented and compared graphically via logarithmic scale.