Missing the point: are journals using the ideal number of decimal places?

ABSTRACT: Background: The scientific literature is growing in volume and reducing in readability. Poorly presented numbers decrease readability by either fatiguing the reader with too many decimal places, or confusing the reader by not using enough decimal places, and so making it difficult to comprehend differences between numbers. There are guidelines for the ideal number of decimal places, and in this paper I examine how often percents meet these guidelines. Methods: Percents were extracted from the abstracts of research articles published in 2017 in 23 selected journals. Percents were excluded if they referred to a statistical interval, typically a 95% confidence interval. Counts and percents were calculated for the number of percents using too few or too many decimal places, and these percents

SUBMITTER: Barnett AG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6073092 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature