Final answer:
The question concerns calculating and expressing an answer with the correct number of significant figures, ensuring that the final result is as precise as the least precise number used in the calculation.
Step-by-step explanation:
The question is asking for a calculation to be made with numbers that have different amounts of significant figures. When performing calculations, the final answer should have the same number of significant figures as that of the least precise measurement involved in the calculation. It's not clear what the calculation in the question is, but the instructions seem to indicate that the answer should have two significant figures because the inexact numbers mentioned (180, 16, 2.20) contain the smallest number of significant figures, which is two. For instance, if we were to add 101.2 (four significant figures) and 18.702 (five significant figures), our final answer, as explained in the example, should be expressed to four significant figures as 119.9.
It is important to round to the correct number of significant digits based on the numbers used in the calculation. Each of the example problems presented (2.4.3 and 2.4.4) highlights the importance of maintaining precision consistent with the given data, even when using a calculator that may display more digits than are significant.