Accuracy refers to the number of significant digits while precision
refers to the decimal position of the last significant digit.
Example
If we compare two numbers lets say 0.057 and 3.563,
we see that 3.563 is more accurate because it has four
significant digits, where 0.041 only has two. We also notice
that the two numbers have the same precision, since the last
significant digit is in the thousandths position for both.
Often times we will need to round off numbers we calculated to
their correct significant digit. As an example lets say we need to
round 8.631 to 3 significant digits we would get 8.63. If we wanted
to round this off to 2 significant digits we would round it to 8.6.
Note that we use the symbol ≈ to represent a term that is
approximately equal to. |
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