Rounding to 3 Significant Figures

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.

	You are learning this because future ideas are built on previous ideas and the more ideas you learn the more power you have to learn anything, ever! The world's best football player engages in rigorous training, practicing skills repeatedly to prepare for the big game. While the specific actions rehearsed during these exercises are rarely needed in the match, the very process of performing these drills enhances their overall prowess as a top player. more...	More Activities: Maths Map Go Maths Games Puzzles Times Tables TablesMaster iPad Maths Investigations Exam Questions
Mathematicians are not the people who find Maths easy; they are the people who enjoy how mystifying, puzzling and hard it is. Are you a mathematician? Comment recorded on the 24 May 'Starter of the Day' page by Ruth Seward, Hagley Park Sports College: "Find the starters wonderful; students enjoy them and often want to use the idea generated by the starter in other parts of the lesson. Keep up the good work" Comment recorded on the i asp?ID_Top 'Starter of the Day' page by Ros, Belize: "A really awesome website! Teachers and students are learning in such a fun way! Keep it up..."		Each month a newsletter is published containing details of the new additions to the Transum website and a new puzzle of the month. The newsletter is then duplicated as a podcast which is available on the major delivery networks. You can listen to the podcast while you are commuting, exercising or relaxing. Transum breaking news is available on Twitter @Transum and if that's not enough there is also a Transum Facebook page.
Featured Activity Connect 4 Factors A mathematical version of the popular Connect 4 game based on getting four numbers with a common factor in a line. Fun for one, two or a whole class of pupils.	Answers There are answers to this exercise but they are available in this space to teachers, tutors and parents who have logged in to their Transum subscription on this computer. A Transum subscription unlocks the answers to the online exercises, quizzes and puzzles. It also provides the teacher with access to quality external links on each of the Transum Topic pages and the facility to add to the collection themselves. Subscribers can manage class lists, lesson plans and assessment data in the Class Admin application and have access to reports of the Transum Trophies earned by class members. If you would like to enjoy ad-free access to the thousands of Transum resources, receive our monthly newsletter, unlock the printable worksheets and see our Maths Lesson Finishers then sign up for a subscription now: Subscribe
Go Maths Learning and understanding Mathematics, at every level, requires learner engagement. Mathematics is not a spectator sport. Sometimes traditional teaching fails to actively involve students. One way to address the problem is through the use of interactive activities and this web site provides many of those. The Go Maths page is an alphabetical list of free activities designed for students in Secondary/High school. Maths Map Are you looking for something specific? An exercise to supplement the topic you are studying at school at the moment perhaps. Navigate using our Maths Map to find exercises, puzzles and Maths lesson starters grouped by topic.
Teachers
If you found this activity useful don't forget to record it in your scheme of work or learning management system. The short URL, ready to be copied and pasted, is as follows:	Alternatively, if you use Google Classroom, all you have to do is click on the green icon below in order to add this activity to one of your classes.	It may be worth remembering that if Transum.org should go offline for whatever reason, there is a mirror site at Transum.info that contains most of the resources that are available here on Transum.org. When planning to use technology in your lesson always have a plan B!
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.

For Students:

For Teachers:

For All:

Transum.org is a proud supporter of the kidSAFE Seal Program

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 3 Significant Figures

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

Menu Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 Level 6 Level 7 Help More...

Instructions

More Activities:

Featured Activity

Connect 4 Factors

Answers

Go Maths

Maths Map

Teachers

Description of Levels

Curriculum Reference

Example

Ways to denote significant figures in an integer with trailing zeros

Adapted from a longer piece in a Wikipedia article