Question

What is 3,482 to two significant figures

Answer 1

3.5 or 3.5e+0 (significant figures: 2, decimals: 1)

Steps:

#1: 3.482 (the original number has 4 sig figs)

#2: 3.5 (rounded to 2 significant figures)

Answer 2

Significant carries the meaning of "important".

So 2 significant figure implies that we want to keep the 2 most important digits in the figure.

Identifying the 2 significant digits:

In 3482,

⇒ the digit 3 which stands for 3000 is the most significant digit

⇒ the digit 4 which stands for 400 is the next significant digit

⇒ Therefore these are the 2 digits we will keep.

Rounding:

In 3482, we have concluded that we will keep the "3000" and the "400", making the number 3400

Next, we look at the next significant digit to check for rounding.

Rounding rules:

If the digit is less than 5, we ignore

Else we add 1 to the significant figure.

In 3482,

we checked the digit 8. Since 8 is not less than 5, we add 1 to the the digit"4"

3482 ≈ 3500

Answer: 3500