Friday, October 20, 2006

3 Decimal (Places) Please!

A *little pal was so eager to show me something. He remembers quite clearly that I mentioned if we were to leave the answer in 4 decimal places as lifted from the standard normal distribution table, we wouldn’t be penalized, although the norm is to leave the answer in 3 significant figures.

He was puzzled as to why a suggested solution (from a certain source) seems to stress that we cannot leave the answer in 4 d.p., but must change it to 3 d.p. instead. What a contradiction, he felt.

He showed me this :



He said, “You see, they say must change to 3 d.p.. Why huh? They even write down the word ‘please
’. Why huh?” He underlined the word '3 dec. pls.' while trying to draw my attention to the correct places.

*Ahem.. Of course his face turned to quite a unique shade of red when I lightly told him “N ah, 'pls.' stands for 'places' and not 'please'.


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