• HexBee@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    I don’t quite think you got his point since they are not literally the same. 32/64 implies an accuracy of 1/64th or .01563. 0.5 implies an accuracy of 0.05 or half of the increment of measurement (0.1 in this case).

    I don’t agree however that fractions are more accurate since it is arbitrary. For instance 0.5000 is much more accurate than 32/64 or 1/64.

    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      It’s not that precision can’t be arbitrarily recorded higher in fraction, it’s that precision can’t be recorded precisely. Decimal is essentially fractional that’s written differently and ignoring every fraction that isn’t a power of 10.

      How can a measurement 3/4 that’s precise to 1/4 unit be recorded in decimal using significant figures? The most-correct answer would be 1. “0.8” or “0.75” suggest a precision of 1/10th and 1/100th, respectively, and sig figs are all about eliminating spurious precision.

      If you have 2 measurement devices, and one is 5 times more precise than the other, decimal doesn’t show it because it can only increase precision by powers of 10.

      In the case of 1/64th above, if you just divide it out it shows a false precision of 1/100,000.