Rounding off Stats (1 Viewer)

[qweqwe]

Is it OK to round off stats to make them easier to remember? Say for example, if the unemployment rate is 8.7% or something, could i just round it off to 9%?

 

[Silly Sausage]

Not really, especially if there's a large sample size 0.3 might account for a significantly high amount of people.

 

[mreditor16]

Is it OK to round off stats to make them easier to remember? Say for example, if the unemployment rate is 8.7% or something, could i just round it off to 9%?

It really depends on the original stat and the extent to which you are rounding it. Since figures such as the unemployment rate and inflation rate move by small increments every month, and thus a rounding of magnitude 0.3 seems too significant to get away with. On the other hand, if you were talking about the size of an economy which had real GDP $21.1 million, I think you would be able to get away with rounding it to $20 million.