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Question 5: Why including more digits in answer, does not make it more accurate?

Answer

Accuracy of a measurement is its closeness to the actual value. If the difference between the measured value by the experimenter and the actual value of the quantity is less, the measurement is more accurate. It does not depend on the number of digits in the measurement. For example, if the actual mass of a body is 100 kg, then 99.8 kg is obviously more accurate than 98.2531 kg.

8 Comments

    • Eman

      It has an accuracy of 4 significant digits.
      But if you’re looking for a different answer, then you must know that accuracy is relative to the actual measured value. You cannot tell whether a value is accurate or not if you don’t know the actual value of the measurement. i.e. Value of gravitational acceleration is 9.8m/s2. If you were to make a measurement of g to be 7.5m/s2, it would be inaccurate. If you made another measurement as 9.2m/s2, it would be very accurate. Both precision and accuracy are relative but that is not elaborated in our course book
      Hope this helped 🙂

      • admin

        Eman
        Exactly. And let me say a measurement is said to be ‘relative’ if we measure the quantity with respect to some other value… Thanks.

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