Comment by vel0city

> we'd specify ± (or separate lower/upper tolerances in some situations)

> we calculated those ± values using the chain rule/uncertainty propagation

Yes, that's common in detailed engineering documents. It still doesn't change the fact if I ask for 3.000 and you give me 3.001 I'm not going to consider that in-spec despite not giving a ±. It's assumed if I wrote it out to that decimal point I'm caring about that level of precision.

> Using decimal points to indicate uncertainty was not a thing I believe I did after high school

Well, I'd imagine since the topic of lesson was understanding whole numbers at a basic level this was probably a high school or lower class, probably more like elementary or middle school. You know, in that time when you did use decimal places to indicate precision. This person wasn't talking about losing points at their engineering job.