Maths Formula!

[TonyHolmes]

Help! I need a formula to format any whole number or decimal to 1, 2 or 3 significant figures. Can anybody help????
Frustrated Maths Teacher

 

[fairwinds]

Hi,

I think it's quite hard,

Check out this long thread:

http://www.mrexcel.com/board2/viewtopic.php?t=66703&highlight=significant

 

[al_b_cnu]

Hi,

do you mean Format|Cells, select 'Number & set the 'Decimal Places' as required?

HTH

Alan

 

[AlohaJulio]

Have you tried the round functions? Check out this tip:
http://www.j-walk.com/ss/excel/usertips/tip032.htm

Rounding to n significant digits
Excel includes three functions (ROUND, ROUNDUP, and ROUNDDOWN) that round values to a specified number of digits. In some cases, however, you may need to round a value to a specified number of significant digits.

For example, you might want to express the value 1,432,187 in terms of two significant digits (that is, as 1,400,000). Here's an elegant solution. The formula below rounds the value in cell A1 to the number of significant digits specified in cell A2:

=ROUND(A1,A2-1-INT(LOG10(ABS(A1))

 

[DRJ]

Format | Cells | Scientific will get you close. If you set to two decimal places it will give you a three sig fig number. If you have more than three significant figures it will reduce it to three, the problem is if you have 1 or 2 significant figures it will still give you three. i.e. 100 has one sig fig, but willl display as 1.00 E+02 which is three sig figs.

 

[TonyHolmes]

Thanks all for your helpful suggestions, I think you may have solved it now!