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In science, uncertainty refers to the precision of your measurements. No matter what instrument you use the last figure you write down is the figure with the uncertainty. A burette is carefully manufactured to measure volume but the manufacture knows that there will be some uncertainty - the burette can be read with confidence to with in 0.1 mL. That means that the volume reading 25.3 ± 0.1 mL is correct. When a calculation is done with this volume the uncertainty is converted to a percentage uncertainty. The scientist understands that every measurement has some uncertainty in it and this uncertainty is contained in any answer. When the answer is written down it must take account of the uncertainty of the measurements. When calculating the calculator may have 8 figures in the answer but these figures are meaningless if the the starting figures were uncertain after the 3rd figure.
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