Significant digits in a float?

[Chris Angelico]

On Wed, Apr 30, 2014 at 2:47 AM, Ned Batchelder <ned at nedbatchelder.com> wrote:
> Reminds me of the story that the first survey of Mt. Everest resulted in a
> height of exactly 29,000 feet, but to avoid the appearance of an estimate,
> they reported it as 29,002: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2684102

Yeah. Exactly the same phenomenon as I was referring to earlier when I
said that you never tell someone you need to leave in five minutes -
if you say six minutes, you'll be away sooner.

ChrisA