As a physicist, I agree that when one wishes to publish values of
experimental physical quantities in scientific papers, one needs to use a
more sophisticated understanding of uncertainty.
However, I very much am on the same page as John Mallinckrodt when it comes
to dealing with students in a general physics lab or homework or even in
news broadcasts and real estate calculations. In these situations the use
of simple rules for significant digits at least gets one in the ball park
and not out in the bleachers. In advanced labs we have students do more
careful analyses and studies of uncertainties and errors in measuring.
As a teacher, I suggest we remember that in most high school courses and
the beginning undergraduate courses, we are just beginning to train
students in physics and that they are not yet graduate students and may
never be. Thus using the concept of significant digits seems very
appropriate as a rough approximation that begins to get students thinking
about the uncertainties in their measurements.
Richard Bowman
Dept. of Physics
Bridgewater College, Bridgewater, VA, USA
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