A common mistake that I often see people make is not understanding significant digits.This can lead to misunderstandings of the accuracy of results.

You are a race official using an electronic timing system to determine the winningtime in running a 100 m dash.

The device reports that the person ran the race in 10.996 seconds.Official results for this race are always reported to the nearest hundreth of a second.What is the offical time?How would you write it on the score sheet?Is there any question of possible error in doing that?