To illustrate the perils of "sig figs" in lurid detail, let's redo one of the worked exercises, namely item (e) on page 20, in section 1.7.
When I do it, I get that h = 0.138 ± 0.065, where the error bar is the HWHM of a rectangular (not Gaussian) distribution. This stands in contrast to the value given in the book, namely 0.1, which I take to mean 0.1 ± 0.05. Note that my central value differs from the claim in the book by more than 3/4ths
of the claimed error bar. More than 40% of the actual data falls outside the claimed error bars. The situation is shown in the attached diagram.
This sort of data destruction is all-too-common when using "sig figs". Actually, worse destruction than this is quite common. For this reason among many others, people who care about their data do not use sig figs.
See item #101 for a catalog of related issues.
To illustrate the perils of "sig figs" in lurid detail, let's redo one of the worked exercises, namely item (e) on page 20, in section 1.7.
When I do it, I get that h = 0.138 ± 0.065, where the error bar is the HWHM of a rectangular (not Gaussian) distribution. This stands in contrast to the value given in the book, namely 0.1, which I take to mean 0.1 ± 0.05. Note that my central value differs from the claim in the book by more than 3/4ths of the claimed error bar. More than 40% of the actual data falls outside the claimed error bars. The situation is shown in the attached diagram.
This sort of data destruction is all-too-common when using "sig figs". Actually, worse destruction than this is quite common. For this reason among many others, people who care about their data do not use sig figs.