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Re: Would You Believe?



It's also not trivial to program all the rules--especially for a calculator.
I've tried to do so in my fitting package (actually it is a hidden option
that the instructor can set, normally the calculated slopes, intercepts,
exponents, etc. are not corrected for sig figs unless the option has been
chosen). Just dealing with multiplication and division, it is still a
problem to determine the number of sig figs in numbers when you have leading
or trailing zero's. Add in the rules for addition, subtraction,
exponentiation, etc. and you would need quite a few lines of code that must
somehow be compiled for a chip in the calculator. Can be done, I suppose,
but not easily.

Rick

----- Original Message -----
From: Tom DeBrita <debritat@NORWICH.NET>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 1999 8:39 PM
Subject: Re: Would You Believe?


Paul O Johnson writes,

"What I still don't understand is why the calculator manufacturers cannot
design
their machines to display the answers with the correct number of SD based
on
the
precision of the factors entered. It would be so simple, and it would sure
save a
lot teeth gnashing."

Wouldn't this only serve to perpetuate ignorance regarding significant
figures? I think simply having students get "the right answer" because
their calculators are smarter about significant figures than they are is
not
what we want. Don't we want to bring students to an understanding about
why
the notion of significant figures is important. If we are going to teach
more than just concepts, bringing students to some level of calculation
ability, we must couch our teaching of doing calculations in terms of
significant figures and uncertainty.

Tom DeBrita