What does it mean that general relativity has been verified to 5 decimal places?

please help me understand this. i need to know how reliable general relativity is, and this is what i read. however, i don't understand what it means. thanks.|||Suppose I have a scale which measures my weight as 180 lbs, it tells me my weight to 2 digit.





If I stand on a more advanced scale, perhaps I measure my weight (without changing my body or Earth's gravity) as 183.54 lbs. I now know my weight to 5 digits.





Now apply it to GR context. Our theoretical model of GR has been shown to match experimetal evidence to 5 digits. That is what your statement means.|||One of the toughest parts of learning the sciences is the jargon... the terminology. A lot of that comes from tekkies, the scientists themselves, inventing the terms and definitions. Unfortunately, most of them have no clue how to do that properly; so we end up with definitions and terms that make little sense to the normal person. Anyway, to your question....





If we have a number N with no fraction or decimal point, we call that a whole number.





If we have a number N.n with a decimal point and another number n in the first slot, the first place, after the decimal point, we call that a decimal number to the first place.





Similarly N.nn is a decimal number to the second place, N.nnn is to the third place, etc.





So when GTR is verified to the fifth decimal place that means its predictions and the observed results jibe out to N.nnnnn which is a decimal number to the fifth place. But it also means that for the sixth decimal place, N.nnnnnX, some discrepancies between predictions and observed results are likely to crop up.





In a properly designed experiment, the likelihood of the discrepancy in that sixth position or higher is usually specified. This is something we learn to do in courses called the Design and Analysis of Experiments, or something similar.