There is a rule that when multiplying and dividing numbers, the end-result has the same number of significant digits as the least precise number.
This should only be considered a rule-of-thumb; the actual combined error can be bigger.
You don't need books on calculus to confirm this (quick estimates of the combined error can be obtained through differentials); you only need to multiply the worst-case extremes, to get the maximum combined error.
Also note that "significant digits" is only a rough estimate of the percentage error, for instance, 98 (100 - 2) has 2 significant digits, wherease 102 (100 + 2) has 3!
>That's not what I was refering to. Are you sure that imlicit error in the result of following calculation is 0.00005 not bigger?
>
>3.1000 ± 0.00005 * 2.5567 ± 0.00005 is 7.9258 ± 0.00005
>
>P.S. I maybe mistaken but I'm to leazy to go and read books on the subject. :-)
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