Troublesome decimals; a hidden problem in the sports medicine literature.

摘要

Reviewing the sports medicine literature reveals an inconsistency in reporting of number of decimal places which indicate accuracy of numerical values of research findings. From a statistical standpoint, the number of decimal places in the quantitative research findings is directly related to the precision of measurements. The output of statistical softwares usually presents the calculated results with several decimal places regardless of either the precision of measurements or any other limitations. This might lead to incorrect reporting of the findings, particularly in case of copy-pasting the results from the output of software into tables or text. In this letter, we debate on the accuracy of some numerical values routinely use by sports medicine authors.