Re: Significant figures - a Modest Proposal

["Robert W. Harris" <rwharris@CATH-MEM.ORG>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Leigh Palmer <palmer@SFU.CA>
To: PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Date: Thursday, August 26, 1999 11:43 PM
Subject: Significant figures - a Modest Proposal


> Has anyone got the impression I've had for years that teaching the
> topic of significant figures is counterproductive?

(snip)

> The big problem with rules for significant digits is that the number is
> necessarily quantized...[sometimes] the baby gets thrown out and the
bathwater gets retained
> because of these rules...

Christopher L. Mulliss has written an easy to read paper on this. It is
located at

http://www.angelfire.com/oh/cmulliss/round2.html

I used his paper last year as the basis of a somewhat protracted discussion
of the approximateness of these 'rules of thumb'...and the availability of
an "alternate rule".   As might be expected, it made sense to the very
mathematical students and went completely by most of the class.

> My practice is *lazy fair* with regard to the sin of excessive
> precision.
(major snip)

> I think that learning the concepts of physics is sufficiently difficult
> for students without clouding their minds with somewhat arbitrary
> procedures which will be of no long term use to them. ..Let's get rid of
this traditional
> dinosaur and see if it helps students learn.
>
> Leigh

I'm inclined to think that, at least at the high school level, Sig.Figs.
might be a good topic to sacrifice to the gods of the depth/breath of
syllabus debate.

Br. Robert W. Harris
Catholic Memorial High School
rwharris@cath-mem.org
http://www.cath-mem.org/physics/contents.htm