Talk:Plus–minus sign

Does anyone really read +/- as "give or take" ?

Of course people say "give or take" meaning something similar to this, but do people really read this symbol as that? I've never encountered it, and it says "citation required". Perhaps it should go.

(And writing this, I realise that the page doesn't mention the typewriter-convention of "+/-". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.7.19.134 (talk) 23:20, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

I have heard it pronounced as give or take, but never in a scientific/statistical context as the article suggests. I have updated the article to make it clear that give or take is a colloquial way to pronounce the symbol. - Zephyris _Talk 16:47, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I love the plus-minus sign!!!! Weeeeeeee! 66.103.235.169 22:18, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Then, may I recommend the interrobang‽--Joel 00:14, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

AGK loves the interrobang :) AGK (talk) 18:56, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Use for standard error of the mean

In biology, or at least cell biology, it's common to use plus-minus to give the standard error of the mean for a variable. In a paper, you typically declare what you're doing in the methods section, so there's no ambiguity; it is different to practice in other fields, though.

And yes, this does mean we're effectively using 67% confidence limits. Sigh.

-- Tom Anderson 2008-01-29 2013 +0000 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.40.81.63 (talk) 20:13, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Purple box added

For transparency, consensus-building purposes, I wish to make editors aware that I have added the purple box, with "±" depicted, to the article (diff). If there are any qualms or enquiries regarding my change, please feel free to discuss with me on my talk page, or below (NB, you might wish to drop me a note of any discussion ongoing here, at my talk page). Regards, AGK (talk) 18:56, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I changed the font of plus-minus in purple box to separate the signs from each other. User: unregistered

Chess

Is it worth mentioning the use of this symbol in chess notation to mean "[clear] advantage for White", as in Punctuation_(chess)#Position_evaluation_symbols? -Phoenixrod (talk) 19:00, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Digits of precision

All the examples are for large uncertainties on imprecise numbers. Can anyone point to a source describing the number of digits used in relation with more precise numbers. Lets say you get a result something like 3.14159265±0.0012345678, what would be the correct way to write this up? --Thorseth (talk) 15:09, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

An example like the one you gave, "3.14159265±0.0012345678", would not normally be seen as the error is large enough that many of the significant figures are irrelevant - it is rare that more than one or two significant figures would be included in the error. Notation you could use would be 3.1415±0.0012.

If you are referring to the problem of preceding zeroes the normal way would be to use scientific notation or more appropriate units to express the number, e.g. 1.24±0.03×10^-5 m or 12.4±0.3 μm. - Zephyris _Talk 16:57, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this was my understanding too, but can it be put in the article without a reference? --Thorseth (talk) 21:36, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

This is so generally known that in my opinion a reference is not needed, but if you wanted to include one you could refer to any scientific journal in which a number of figures are quoted in this format. It is also worth pointing out that, using the above example, the notation "3.1415(12)" is also common. Ehrenkater (talk) 17:41, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

In the minus/plus section

It's probably worth noting that, while the expression x±y∓z isn't ambiguous, the expression x±y±z is, since it doesn't determine whether the signs can be different or whether they have to be the same.