How to Set the Number of Significant Figures

[#1]

A frustration of mine with JMP is the lack of attention to significant figures with numerical data.  I spend an signficant amount of time  re-formating numerical reports based on the statistics within the report itself.  For example, if a parameter estimate is known to have an uncertainty of plus/minus 1%, then it makes no sense to report  the estimate or the confidence limits beyond three signficant figures.  I consider it a bit embarrasing to report 8 or sometimes 12 signficant figures.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Double click in the table on the column you want to change. Then change the format to scientific and change the width to the number of significant figures in the calculation.

[#3]

is there a way to change the font size, display for the label? sometimes it feels to small and having a hard time spacing it even after rounding the sig digits

[#4]

The fonts and font sizes are set in the Preferences

     File==>Preferences==>Fonts

You can also change the size while you are viewing by using the the key stroke

     CNTL/Shift/+   to increase font size, or    CNTL/Shift/-   to reduce font size

[#5]

I like to use Format -> Precision, then set 'Dec' to number of significant figures you want. This gives the correct number of significant figures but it's not in scientific notation. 

[#6]

Here's an interesting article: http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1301/1301.1034.pdf

I wrote a little script to implement this approach in a function.  Some people don't like the loss of false precision...