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Re: [Phys-l] Significant figures -- again



I apologize to John Denker for misunderstanding his position on the issue of "significant figures" and am glad to see that we are apparently in full agreement. In my defense I would only say that I have followed his postings on this topic quite carefully for some time and it still seems to me that those posts have generally suggested a pretty unequivocal position on the topic, one that I certainly WOULD disagree with were if really John's position.

As John notes, on March 12 at 5:10 PM I wrote, "I'd be utterly flabbergasted to hear you quote a length as 3.8675309 cm if you only knew it to within a few mm."

But it was in DIRECT response to that statement and a followup in which I reiterated that statement (a statement that I still find completely uncontroversial) that John went to the trouble of constructing an elaborate and beautiful example (even if entirely unrelated to the point of my comment) involving matrices and posting it on Mar 29 at 12:05 PM. I say "in DIRECT response" because John explicitly quotes my comment at the end of that post and even expresses bewilderment at it.

More recently, on April 10 at 5:28 PM, John returned to the same topic and summarized a collection of nice examples (if once again unrelated IMO to the point of my comment.) This post TOO was apparently in DIRECT response to my simple, uncontroversial comment as indicated by the fact that he ends it once again by quoting my comment about how I'd be flabbergasted and asking "Even still?"

John Mallinckrodt
Cal Poly Pomona

On Apr 12, 2012, at 8:58 PM, John Denker wrote:

Are we going to play lawyer games now? I'd rather not, but if you
insist .....

Does anybody on this list really think I *always* write 10 or more
digits?

Does anybody on this list really think there are only two possibilities,
namely (a) always writing 10 or more digits, or (b) never doing so? ...

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