DCP, aspect 3:
Students seem to find this difficult to achieve a ‘c’. The aspect is looking for students to correctly present their final answer (to the correct number of significant figures) and to display an uncertainty / error value (to the correct number of significant figures).
In IA assessment we usually get bogged down with errors and uncertainties. There are, however, more subtle concepts at large! Most students muddle up the words and ideas behind the terms ‘accurate’ and ‘precise’.
In order to understand these concepts it is important that you imagine that the ‘thing’ you are measuring has a ‘true value’ and accuracy and precision are measured with respect to this ‘true’ value.
It is important that we express the correct number of significant figures in our calculations. Take the example below.
Work through this sample calculation and post your answer:
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