Question

How can I do math involving significant figures in C++? I want this to work correct with measured data from chemistry and physics experiments. An example: 65 / 5 = 10. I would need to get rid of unneeded decimal places and replace some digits with 0s.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Well there are good math libraries in math.h

Also storing your figures in floats, doubles or long doubles will allow for more precise operations.

Floats offer 7 significant digits while doubles offer 16 significant digits.

source

Also when printing out usually people use _snprintf or printf and you can format those doubles, floats to the precision you want like:

Float Precision

printf(“Value %8.2f”, floatVariable);

This says you require a total
field of 8 characters, within the 8
characters the last 2 will hold the
decimal part.

_snprintf(buffer, sizeof(buffer), “Value %.2f”, floatVariable);

The example above
requests the minimum field width and
the last two characters are to hold
the decimal part.