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Question from stackexchange
How many significant figures are there after 96 is correct to 1 significant figure?

From this statement:

It is given that the approximated number of elastic in a box is 100. If the number is correct to 1

significant figure, what is the smallest possible number of elastic?

Answer: 100

How would one express this in $x \pm y$ notation?:

All x in 100 <= x <= 149 gets mapped to $1 \times 10^2$ = 100.

How to express this in $x \pm y$ notation?

I would have supposed $100 \pm 49$, because 51..149 gets rounded to 100,
but then the statement from the correct answer will be violated:
"smallest possible number is 100".

catweazle
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1 Answers1

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Significant "numbers" is not significant "figures"! In any case, "96 correct to 1 significant figure" means that it has been rounded to the "ones" place. And that means the number can be anywhere from 95.5 to 96.5. [tex]x= 96\pm 0.5[/tex].

user247327
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  • Corrected number into figure. Thx. Did you not actually mean to the tens place? Actually my question focuses to the citation part. The "what happens to 96" was answered as: It gets rounded to 100 and has 2 sig figs. Because the tens place overflows to the hundreds place. – catweazle Mar 05 '21 at 19:52