Final answer:
The notion that financial accounting deals only with precise, exact numbers is false. Financial accounting involves both exact and inexact numbers, with significant figures used to accurately reflect the known precision of those figures.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement 'Financial accounting deals with numbers that are exact. A 3 is a 3 and nothing else.' is False. In financial accounting, there are both exact and inexact numbers. Exact numbers are those that are known with certainty, such as the number of dollars in a pile of ten real dollar bills. In contrast, inexact numbers often come from measurements or estimates and can therefore carry a certain degree of uncertainty. This is where the concept of significant figures comes into play. Significant figures are used in accounting to describe the value of a number without overstating the degree to which it is known to be accurate. Precision is important as well, so if a value is known to a certain number of significant digits, any calculations based on that value should maintain that level of precision.
For example, when an accountant reports financial results, they may round to the nearest thousand dollars because that level of precision is reasonable for the size of the company. Moreover, money itself serves as a unit of account, allowing for a standardized measure of value for goods and services.