Hi there. It’s me, the person who stares very hard at the numbers in the papers you write. I’ve brought you here today to ask a favor. Many people

Please show lots of digits - DYNOMIGHT INTERNET NEWSLETTER

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2024-10-24 16:30:05

Hi there. It’s me, the person who stares very hard at the numbers in the papers you write. I’ve brought you here today to ask a favor.

Many people would think that’s hilarious. You wrote 5 digits after the decimal point! When you only have 446 students! Do you think you’re estimating the true difference in pass rates to an accuracy of 0.00001%? Do you think that final “664” is meaningful? Ha! Hahahaha! What a fool you are!

Numbers in the text of articles and in tables should be reported with no more precision than they are measured and are substantively meaningful.

a recent report that the mean of 17 values was 3.863 with a standard error of the mean (SEM) of 2.162 revealed only that none of the seven authors understood the limitations of their work.

my favorite is the p-value of 4.76×10^−264. I love that they have all these decimal places. Because 4×10^-264 wouldn’t be precise enuf.