I'm having trouble with determining the correct amount of decimal places to use in my calculations for my physics assignment. What I have been doing is using as many digits as possible during the entire calculation process (about 10 decimal places) until I reach the final answer, which I round to 5. Is there anything wrong with doing this? Should I be using 5 the whole way through if I'm only going to round it to 5 later? This has always confused me.. Can anyone help me out?

Question

stormfire1 · Answer

You should check out this tutorial on significant figures: http://www.chem.sc.edu/faculty/morgan/resources/sigfigs/

anonymous · Answer

I know briefly about significant figures, I was just wondering if the amount of decimal places I use during a calculation would make any negative effect on the final answer.

stormfire1 · Answer

You should only adjust for sigfigs when you change the type of calculation (multiplication/division to addition/subtraction and vice versa) or reach the end of a problem.  

For example, if your problem contains a number of multiplication and division operations, keep all the figures and adjust it at the end.  

Also remember that the sigfig rules only apply to measured values.  So if your problem contains constants (like pi), the number of significant figures in the constant does not factor into the final determination of sigfigs.