Ephraim Muchada Govere
Environmental and Soil Chemistry Laboratory
Department of Crop and Soil Sciences
116 Agricultural Sciences and Industries Building
College of Agricultural Sciences
The Pennsylvania State University, PA 16802

A measured value has little or no true meaning and thus, it is useless, unless the figures (digits) in that value were deemed to be significant and the significant figures were properly determined and reported. Deciding the appropriate number of significant figures for the reporting of numerical data is not an obvious or easy task. “Guidelines on Determining and Reporting Significant Figures in Chemical Measurements” presents among other things, step by step guidelines on determining significant figures in chemical measurements and their calculated values, rounding off measurement results, reporting values and their estimated uncertainties, reporting significant figures in graph interpretations, and using significant figures as a quality control objective. After mastering the guidelines in this handbook, appropriate number of significant figures would be decided by students, teachers, instructors, laboratory technicians, scientists, and authors on the basis of scholarly considerations rather than arbitrary reasons of habit.