The Definitive Guide to Business Finance: What smart managers do with the numbers, Second Edition

Significant accuracy

Making figures significant

A certain company’s net profit was a few cents over $18,208,371 last year. When the CEO reported the results, he described the profit as ‘just over $18.2 million’. This was more sensible than reading out the amount to the last dollar, because the audience would have been struggling to make sense of a number read to eight significant figures. The precise figure was there in an annex for anyone with particular interest to read.

Detailed figures should be calculated to an appropriately high degree of accuracy, but numbers summarized in the body of reports or given in presentations are usually better rounded. Normally, you can make the number easier to comprehend, especially for large amounts, as follows: ...