How many significant figures?

The overstating of accuracy is something that physics teachers have to continually correct. Just because one’s calculator gives an answer to ten significant figures doesn’t mean one should quote it to ten significant figures.

I’ve just looked up the location of Nakedbus’s Auckland City bus stop. It was very easy to do – drawing from Google Maps. For those who are interested, one can find the bus stop at 36.8432758738427 degrees south, 174.766430854797 degrees east. That locates it to about 100 nanometres (100 billionths of a metre)  in position. No excuse for waiting in the wrong place, then.

 

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