So..... You are correct, at least as far as it goes. You cannot be more precise than your original data, and that is precisely (sorry!) correct.
HOWEVER.
During intermediate calculation, you're losing data and precision by rounding or otherwise throwing away digits. Once you've finished, yes, you are only accurate to your least significant digit, but you can lose fractions of that if you discard digits during calculation.
So I find absolutely no problem with a drawing with excess precision, because that drawing should ALSO specify the tolerance on that basic dimension. I.E., how accurate to that median value do you really need to be.
(pendantic commentary off now....)
SRK
hank Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> John West Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > I used to work in the finance industry where
> wild
> > ass assumptions would be fed into a computer
> and
> > the results would always come out with many
> > numbers to the right of the decimal.
> >
> Ah yes, the Curse Of The Caculator. Science
> teachers everywhere have spent the last 50 years
> trying to pound the idea of significant digits
> into to student minds. Your answer CAN NOT be more
> precise than your data, in fact it will be LESS
> precise if you did any multiplication along the
> way and all that.
> "But my calculator gives me more digits."
>
> hank