significant figures
Significant figures are all of the digits that can be known with certainty in a measurement plus an estimated last digit. Significant figures provide a system to keep track of the limits of the original measurement. To record a measurement, you must write down all the digits actually measured, including measurements of zero, and you must not write down any digit not measured. The only real difficulty with this system is that zeros are sometimes used as measured digits, while other times they are used to locate the decimal point.