“Use round numbers where possible, particularly to avoid a false appearance of precision.” – IRE Beat Book
I found this interesting because most of us learned in math to be more precise.
“Regardless of how simple or complex your data set seems, always request the “data dictionary,” a list of all of the fields in your data set, their names and what type of information is in there, such as dates, numbers or phrases.” – American Press Institute
I didn’t realize the importance of data dictionaries until after reading these articles and would like to learn more about how to use them exactly.
I think the decimal answer goes to a more fundamental issue with data journalism, false precision. Data by nature is incomplete. If we tell the public that we are 97.456789% certain it is correct, we are not serving them well because we know the data is dirty and has holes in it.
Does that make sense? Nice comment.