{"id":1513,"date":"2013-10-02T21:29:59","date_gmt":"2013-10-02T21:29:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/?p=1513"},"modified":"2013-10-02T21:35:38","modified_gmt":"2013-10-02T21:35:38","slug":"significant-figures-and-decimal-places","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/?p=1513","title":{"rendered":"Significant figures and decimal places"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Following the finding that students struggle with significant figures and decimal places, we added a question that tested fairly basic rule-based understanding (of stuff that I thought we were teaching quite well in the <em>Maths for Science<\/em> book).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Capture.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-1514\" title=\"Capture\" src=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Capture-300x294.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"294\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Capture-300x294.png 300w, https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Capture.png 371w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>The question is shown on the left hand side.<\/p>\n<p>I have to say that I&#8217;ve been quite surprised by what it is that students got\u00a0wrong. You may like to think about what you&#8217;d expect before reading on.<\/p>\n<p>Using the variant of the question shown as the example, about 95% of the 300 or so students on the presentation we looked at knew that 0.074 is to 3 decimal places, and 87% knew that 0.074 is to 2 sig figs.<\/p>\n<p>86% knew that 7.20 is to 2 decimal places but only 78% knew that 7.20 is to 3 sig figs. The most common error (in 8.4% of responses) was to give this as 2 sig figs &#8211; and an additional 3.5% thought 7.20 was given to 2 sig figs and 1 decimal place.\u00a0\u00a0In other words,\u00a0students do not appreciate that the final zero is there for very good reason!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following the finding that students struggle with significant figures and decimal places, we added a question that tested fairly basic rule-based understanding (of stuff that I thought we were teaching quite well in the Maths for Science book). The question &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/?p=1513\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[111,117],"tags":[369,372],"class_list":["post-1513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mathematical-misunderstandings","category-significant-figures","tag-mathematical-misunderstandings","tag-significant-figures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1513"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1517,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513\/revisions\/1517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.open.ac.uk\/blogs\/SallyJordan\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}