Rounding to 1 Significant Figure

Instructions Try your best to answer the questions above. Type your answers into the boxes provided leaving no spaces. As you work through the exercise regularly click the "check" button. If you have any wrong answers, do your best to do corrections but if there is anything you don't understand, please ask your teacher for help. When you have got all of the questions correct you may want to print out this page and paste it into your exercise book. If you keep your work in an ePortfolio you could take a screen shot of your answers and paste that into your Maths file.

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Ole Frehr, Denmark Wednesday, August 12, 2015 "I just found your web page with the online quiz with three significant figures. It's great! Thank you for putting it online! I think my students will enjoy it." Miss Molinga, Friday, March 16, 2018 "Love your game thank you." Lauri Johnson, Eastern Hancock High School Monday, August 14, 2023 "Some of the questions for 3 sigfigs require the student to write the answer so that it only has 2 sigfigs. For example, 87954 to 3 sigfigs is 8.80 x 10^4, but the practice wants the answer to be 88000. But that answer only has 2 sigfigs. Only a few questions come up like this, but I wanted to pass is along. Other than that, this is a GREAT practice for my chem students. Thanks for making this available. [Transum: Thanks very much Lauri, that's an excellent point. I have added information to the Help tab to explain the situation with examples of how to avoid ambiguity.]" Heerpal, London Wednesday, September 25, 2024 "Thank you so much for your website, I it to help me teach often. I have just been looking at the "rounding" resource, specifically the problems with significant figures, and the does not seem to genereate any numbers with a 'significant' zero - i.e. every digit after the first significant figure is non-zero. It would be great if this resource could generate problem like "Round 0.0030589 to 3s.f.". I have found that these kinds of problems really trip up stundents as they often think that 'zeroes are not significant' and having questions to address this issue would help highlight this misconception. Perhaps the page could even force a few examples like this? [Transum: Thanks for the suggestion Heerpal. I have added your suggested format as the last question on Levels 5 and 6. Thank you.]" Do you have any comments? It is always useful to receive feedback and helps make this free resource even more useful for those learning Mathematics anywhere in the world. Click here to enter your comments.

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Example

Don't wait until you have finished the exercise before you click on the 'Check' button. Click it often as you work through the questions to see if you are answering them correctly. You can double-click the 'Check' button to make it float at the bottom of your screen.

Answers to this exercise are available lower down this page when you are logged in to your Transum account. If you don’t yet have a Transum subscription one can be very quickly set up if you are a teacher, tutor or parent.

Ways to denote significant figures in an integer with trailing zeros

Adapted from a longer piece in a Wikipedia article

The significance of trailing zeros in a number not containing a decimal point can be ambiguous. For example, it may not always be clear if the number 1300 is precise to the nearest unit (just happens coincidentally to be an exact multiple of a hundred) or if it is only shown to the nearest hundreds due to rounding or uncertainty. The following widely recognised options are available for indicating the significance of number with trailing zeros:

Eliminate ambiguous or non-significant zeros by changing the unit prefix in a number with a unit of measurement. For example, the precision of measurement specified as 1300 g is ambiguous, while if stated as 1.30 kg it is not.
Eliminate ambiguous or non-significant zeros by using Scientific Notation: For example, 1300 with three significant figures becomes 1.30×10³.
Explicitly state the number of significant figures (the abbreviation s.f. is sometimes used): For example "20 000 to 2 s.f." or "20 000 (2 sf)".
State the expected variability (precision) explicitly with a plus–minus sign, as in 20 000 ± 1%. This also allows specifying a range of precision in-between powers of ten.

For the purpose of answering the questions in the higher level exercises these methods are not necessary as your typed answers appear on the same page as the instructions stating the number of significant figures required.

Rounding to 1 Significant Figure

Practise your approximation and rounding skills with this online, self-marking exercise.

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Instructions

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Featured Activity

Snooker Investigation

Answers

Go Maths

Maths Map

Teachers

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Curriculum Reference

Example

Ways to denote significant figures in an integer with trailing zeros

Adapted from a longer piece in a Wikipedia article