Rounding to an arbitrary number of significant digits
Here's the same code in Java without the 12.100000000000001 bug other answers have
I also removed repeated code, changed power
to a type integer to prevent floating issues when n - d
is done, and made the long intermediate more clear
The bug was caused by multiplying a large number with a small number. Instead I divide two numbers of similar size.
EDIT
Fixed more bugs. Added check for 0 as it would result in NaN. Made the function actually work with negative numbers (The original code doesn't handle negative numbers because a log of a negative number is a complex number)
public static double roundToSignificantFigures(double num, int n) {
if(num == 0) {
return 0;
}
final double d = Math.ceil(Math.log10(num < 0 ? -num: num));
final int power = n - (int) d;
final double magnitude = Math.pow(10, power);
final long shifted = Math.round(num*magnitude);
return shifted/magnitude;
}
Here's a short and sweet JavaScript implementation:
function sigFigs(n, sig) {
var mult = Math.pow(10, sig - Math.floor(Math.log(n) / Math.LN10) - 1);
return Math.round(n * mult) / mult;
}
alert(sigFigs(1234567, 3)); // Gives 1230000
alert(sigFigs(0.06805, 3)); // Gives 0.0681
alert(sigFigs(5, 3)); // Gives 5