Iv'e been trying to understand this really really simple concept of number chopping.
Let's say that I have a system which is able to save decimal numbers with 3 significant figures and uses the chopping strategy.
The system should evaluate the following value: $ (\frac{1}{8})^2$. The true value is is obviously 0.015625, but my system saves the number as 0.01.
Shouldn't it be 0.0156? as far as I understand, $0.01$ has only 1 significant digits while $0.0156$ has 3, so why isn't the second one the saved value?
Thanks!
Best Answer
$0.01$ has only one significant digit, since leading zeroes are insignificant. The correct answer should indeed be $0.0156$.
It seems to me that whatever "system" you are talking about erroneously treats all digits as significant.