Displaying statistical point estimators: The leading-digit procedure

We propose a procedure for reporting a statistical point estimator and its precision for statistical experiments such as simulation experiments. Based on three criteria -loss of statistical information, number of characters required, and likelihood of user misinterpretation-we advocate our procedure for use when reporting many point estimators in tabular form. The procedure discards meaningless digits of the point estimator, and all but the left-most non-zero digit of the standard error. These two resulting values are separated by the ¿;¿ sign.