When reporting comparisons between values in scientific papers, should you use percentage change, times, or fold?
For instance, should I report:
- “treatment x is 600% higher than treatment y”
- “treatment x is 7 times higher than treatment y”
- “treatment x is 7-fold higher than treatment y”
Also, would it matter if it were a reduction between treatments x and y?
Comments
Doesn’t really matter as long as your interpretation is correct.
I try to avoid percentages when the increase is larger than factor 2 as it can often lead to confusion. To a lot of people, an increase by 600% reads like “increased by a factor of 6”.
Below factor 2, I use percentages because “increase of 33%” sounds better than “increase of factor 1.33”.