SOLUTION: One problem on my homework is "It took 86 hours for joe kittinger To cross the Atlantic in his ballon, Rosie O'Grady, a distance of 3543 miles. What was the average speed of the

Question 547914: One problem on my homework is "It took 86 hours for joe kittinger
To cross the Atlantic in his ballon, Rosie O'Grady, a distance of 3543 miles.
What was the average speed of the ballon ? Round to the nearest tenth ."
So i tried to divide 3543 by 86 and came up with 41.1976744 but it seems
Kind of impossible to round to the nearest tenth . Can you help please ?
Thank You !
Answer by josmiceli(19441) (Show Source): You can put this solution on YOUR website!
( rounded to nearest tenth )
This problem gets into the subject of
" significant figures "
Actually, not all the digits after the decimal point are
really " significant ".
Notice the hours is 86 and not 86.3, or 85.9, so
86 is as close as can be judged
That is 2 significant figures.
3543 has 4 significant figures. They could have said
3543.27. That would have been 6 significant figures
--------------------
The number of significant figures in the answer is
determined by the least accurate number in the input data,
so really only 2 figures in answer can be relied on.
So 3 figures is just fine
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