The system most commonly used for the definition of units of measurement, for example of distance and angle, is the ‘Système Internationale’, abbreviated to SI. The basic units of prime interest are:

Length in metres (m)

 from which we have:

Significant Figures

Engineers and surveyors communicate a great deal of their professional information using numbers. It is important, therefore, that the number of digits used, correctly indicates the accuracy with which the field data were measured. This is particularly important since the advent of pocket calculators, which tend to present numbers to as many as eight places of decimals, calculated from data containing, at the most, only three places of decimals, whilst some eliminate all trailing zeros. This latter point is important, as 2.00 m is an entirely different value to 2.000 m. The latter number implies estimation to the nearest millimetre as opposed to the nearest 10 mm implied by the former. Thus in the capture of field data, the correct number of significant figures should be used.

By definition, the number of significant figures in a value is the number of digits one is certain of plus one, usually the last, which is estimated. The number of significant figures should not be confused with the number of decimal places. A further rule in significant figures is that in all numbers less than unity, the zeros directly after the decimal point and up to the first non-zero digit are not counted. For example:

Two significant figures: 40, 42, 4.2, 0.43, 0.0042, 0.040

Three significant figures: 836, 83.6, 80.6, 0.806, 0.0806, 0.00800