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Welcome to our Math lesson on Significant Figures, this is the seventh lesson of our suite of math lessons covering the topic of Rounding and Significant Figures, you can find links to the other lessons within this tutorial and access additional Math learning resources below this lesson.
Another way of rounding numbers is to count only the first few digits (we call them "figures") that have a value attached to them. This method of rounding is called significant figures and it's often used with larger numbers and very small numbers.
For example, when we have the number 0.00278 and rounding to the nearest unit is required, the result is 0. The same thing is true when asked to round the number to the nearest tenth or hundredth. The results will be 0.0 and 0.00 respectively. Therefore, it is more appropriate to take a look at the structure of number and see which rounding is meaningful to apply. To do this, we have to look at the digits (figures) that are not zero. In the specific case, we must start looking from the digit 2 and onwards for any possible rounding, as this operation (rounding) is meaningful only when non-zero digits are involved. Such digits that are important for any possible rounding are known as "significant figures".
For example, the number above has 3 significant figures: 2, 7 and 8 because only these numbers can be used for rounding.
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