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Glite Dictionary
significant figure

significant figure

1 4.9
A digit that shows how exact a number is and begins with the first digit that is not zero
  • noun
  • /sɪɡˈnɪfɪkənt ˈfɪɡər/
  • Specialized
translation icon : cifra significativa
  • When reporting results, remember to include all the significant figures to reflect the precision of your data.

So to one significant figure, these approximations work really well.

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Examples

  • However, in the case of the sample size determination program, the results are generally accurate to four significant figures, which is quite sufficient for present purposes.

    Academic text (1990)

  • Those four significant figures end up after the decimal point.

  • So that would be the correct significant figure number for this.

  • Seems like researchers these days did not learn their lesson about significant figures.

    Blog text (11)

  • I sift through the significant figures for another half an hour and produce a projection that is good enough for his purposes.

    Fiction book (1999)

  • Existing versions of renormalization in QED give values of g that agree with experiment to about 15 significant figures!

    Blog text (6)

  • In science, accurate calculations often depend on the correct number of significant figures in the measurements.

  • To round a number correctly, it is important to identify the significant figures that contribute to its accuracy.

Synonyms

significant digit
vssignificant figure
  • Specialized
1 5.6

A digit that shows how exact a number is, from the first non-zero to final zeros that show accuracy

treats trailing zeros only when they are known with certainty

Surface Forms

significant figure singular
significant figures plural

Morphology

significant + figure

The phrase straightforwardly combines 'significant' (important/meaningful) with 'figure' (digit/number), so a learner who knows both words can infer it refers to the important or meaningful digits in a number. The precise technical rule about which zeros count is domain-specific, but the basic concept is transparently derivable from the constituents.

Etymology

Significant figure comes from combining significant ('important') and figure ('digit'). It reminds you to count only the digits that really matter for a number's 'precision', so it shows which digits to keep when you show how exact a measurement is.