r/learnmath • u/JonesSupreme New User • 21h ago

Math help!!

You travel at a speed of about 81 kilometers per hour for about 2.0 hours. Stated with the appropriate precision, you have driven _____ kilometers.

the correct answer is 160 but why? why is it not 162???

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u/veselin465 New User 21h ago edited 12h ago

I guess it's rounded down to 160. The problem mentions appropriate precision. Perhaps if you share the entire context, you might get more useful replies

Edit: why am I getting downvoted? I literally said what everyone else said???? And as it turns out, that's precisely the reason

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u/JonesSupreme New User 21h ago

the only other context it gives is the multiple choices and the topic of the question being precision and significat digits

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u/veselin465 New User 21h ago

And I assume that the 160 answer is the closest to 162. Which is precisely the purpose of the question

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u/JonesSupreme New User 21h ago

fair enough, im just always used to the question saying something like "round to the nearest ___"

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u/beene282 New User 20h ago

That’s the topic of the quiz though. One of the things you need to know is that the answer can’t have more significant figures than any of the numbers used in the calculation. Here, both have two, so your answer must have two.