... Now, "3.14160 to 6sf" is not a number. It is a representation of a quantity with uncertainty. Exactly what that means may depend on context (it may, as 22B suggests, need to be thought of as a random variable) but for simplicity let's use the interpretation where it's an interval. Saying that a quantity is "3.14160 to 6sf" means that it is somewhere in the real interval [3.141595,3.141605) (note closed end on the left, open end on the right) where those figures are actually numbers. ...
I agree that a notion of these "fuzzy numbers" could be captured by random variables or by intervals or in various other ways too.
And surely everyone should agree that, pedagogically, it's best to try to understand non-fuzzy numbers (i.e. numbers) first, even those who believe that there's really no such thing as non-fuzzy numbers.
The discussion about intervals and rounding reminds me. DS7 was wondering how are you (officially) supposed to round off -3.5?
