this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
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Another lesson I the importance of significant digits, a concept I've had to remind many a young (and sometimes an old) engineer about. An interesting idea along similar lines is that 2 + 2 can equal 5 for significantly large values of 2.
What do you mean by significantly large
Depending on how you're rounding, I assume. Standard rounding to whole digits states that 2.4 will round to 2 but 4.8 will round to 5. So 2.4+2.4=4.8 can be reasonably simplified to 2+2=5.
This is part of why it's important to know what your significant digits are, because in this case the tenths digit is a bit load bearing. But, as an example, 2.43 the 3 in the hundredths digit has no bearing on our result and can be rounded or truncated.