Significant digits or not significant digits ... [General Sta­tis­tics]

posted by d_labes  – Berlin, Germany, 2008-03-27 11:10 (6075 d 06:04 ago) – Posting: # 1726
Views: 8,620

... thats the question (Hamlet).

Dear HS,

thanks for lighten me a candle :flower: .
Most of your reasoning meets my feeling about this topic.

But some minor comments and questions for clarifying:

❝ However, I would always opt for significant digits - not decimal places.


This is very resonable regarding your reasoning that follows in your post.
But I have seen almost always constant decimal places (mostly 2-3) in the result from analysts.
May be this is because they all use M$-EXCEL :-( .

Have you convinced your analysts in using significant digits?
Or is the discrepancy to the analytical report not an issue?

❝ For many analytical methods even rounding to two significant digits would be sufficient – but I would guess everybody would start screaming then ...


Thats a pity, but "The customer is king".

❝ I do rounding of analytical data to three significant figures ...


Am I right in assuming that you use the rounded values for further processing (PK analysis)?
Or only for reporting the values in the study report?
What about 3 significant digits if LLOQ is given by the analyst with 2 decimals but only 2 significant digits (f.i. 0.88 nano/whatever)?

❝ Cmax… three significant figures; AUC as an integrated parameter to four significant figures…


:confused: AUC (roughly spoken summed conc. multiplied by time ...) gains precision in comparision to Cmax? I had expected the contrary.
Again the question: Rounded values for further processing (statistical analysis of bioequivalence) ?

Regards,

Detlew

Complete thread:

UA Flag
Activity
 Admin contact
23,297 posts in 4,892 threads, 1,695 registered users;
81 visitors (0 registered, 81 guests [including 15 identified bots]).
Forum time: 17:15 CET (Europe/Vienna)

Laws are like sausages – it is better
not to see them being made.    Otto von Bismarck

The Bioequivalence and Bioavailability Forum is hosted by
BEBAC Ing. Helmut Schütz
HTML5