Mathy friends, what is “Fig” in “Fig & Trig”?
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Mathy friends, what is “Fig” in “Fig & Trig”?
Just saw an ad recruiting “Fig & Trig” tutors on campus, and I’m kinda stumped. The only thing I can come up with is ‘figure(s)’ but “Figures and Trigonometry” doesn’t really make sense?
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@tkinias Retired engineer here - and I think "figures" is likely correct. In trigonometry, it's tempting to put down the precise answer that the table or the calculator provides, even though you can't guarantee the accuracy of that number. Significant figures defines how precise of an answer you can calculate.
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@tkinias
Example - I measure the radius of a circle at 3.0 units. The circumference of that circle is therefore 3.0(pi)r, and my calculator tells me that the answer is 18.8495559215. But since my measurement was only accurate to one decimal place, the significant figure answer is 18.8. -
@KurtHohmann
the way I recall it from my undergrad physics was that if one of the inputs was measured 3.0, we’d call that two sig figs, so report the answer as 19—but the principle is much the same -
Thanasis Kiniasreplied to Thanasis Kinias last edited by
@KurtHohmann
but in physics we were often working in scientific notation, so the concept of what’s before & after the decimal place isn’t that clear (that is, 18.85 = 1.885*10^1 = 0.1885*10^2 etc.) -
Asta [AMP]replied to Thanasis Kinias last edited by [email protected]
@[email protected] @[email protected] It's been a minute since I was a TA for undergrad chemistry but I believe you're correct that the correct answer to report would be 19, as you want to maintain two significant figures through the calculation.
I think that's one of the nice things about scientific notation: basically, you just keep the same number of sig figs and adjust the decimal to match (with some caveats about subtraction and addition that don't apply here).
EDIT: ALSO! Sorry for barging in