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What degree of accuracy to answer questions to

When answering questions in Physics A-Level I understand you are supposed to only give your answer to the same level of accuracy as the value with the lowest level of accuracy in the question. However what determines the lowest level of accuracy sig. figs or d.p?

Example: one quantity is given as 1275 and another is given as 1.2.

Let’s say the answer is 134769.58483948

Should my answer be to 1 d.p or 4 SF?

Hopefully this is easy to understand, thanks.
(edited 4 years ago)
Two significant figures, because that is the degree of accuracy in the least accurate value.

The easiest way to do it is to use standard form (where it makes sense to). You could have an answer in the billions but to give that to a specific number of decimal places would be giving it to a much higher degree of accuracy than your answer actually is unless the values you used where to a very large number of significant figures. With standard form, it is very obvious how many significant figures you are giving your answer to, and is generally clearer for the examiner, rather than using two or three significant figures and then having to add a load of zeros. Hope that helps.

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