Loss of significance
Okay kiddo, imagine you have a big bag of candy, and you want to split it equally with your friend. You count the candy pieces, and there are 100 of them. Then you divide the candy into two piles and give one to your friend. But when you count your pile, you get only 49 pieces instead of 50. You think you lost one candy, but you can't find it anywhere. That's because the number you used to divide the candy (2) was too big, and it caused you to lose one candy.
That's kind of what happens with numbers in math sometimes – when we divide or subtract numbers that are almost the same, we can lose some of their differences, and the answer becomes less accurate. This is called "loss of significance."
Let's say you have two numbers, x = 1000.0001 and y = 1000. When you subtract y from x, you get 0.0001. But, if you only have three digits after the decimal point, the result is 0.000, even though there's something left over. That's because the difference between x and y is so small that the digits in the answer that come after the decimal point are lost or "dropped" due to the limited space.
So, whenever you're doing math that involves small differences between big numbers, you need to be careful and use more precise calculations to avoid losing any important information. It's like counting your candy carefully so you can share it equally with your friend.
That's kind of what happens with numbers in math sometimes – when we divide or subtract numbers that are almost the same, we can lose some of their differences, and the answer becomes less accurate. This is called "loss of significance."
Let's say you have two numbers, x = 1000.0001 and y = 1000. When you subtract y from x, you get 0.0001. But, if you only have three digits after the decimal point, the result is 0.000, even though there's something left over. That's because the difference between x and y is so small that the digits in the answer that come after the decimal point are lost or "dropped" due to the limited space.
So, whenever you're doing math that involves small differences between big numbers, you need to be careful and use more precise calculations to avoid losing any important information. It's like counting your candy carefully so you can share it equally with your friend.