Scientific Notation

Entering scientific notation during data entry

Scientific notation is a way of expressing numbers that are too big or too small to be conveniently written in decimal form. For example, 9.99×103

On computer systems, in general, the letter 'e' is used to mean "10 to the power of". REDCap is no exception and for variables that are validated as numbers, data can be entered in this format.

9.99e+3 represents 9.99×103, which is 9990 in decimal notation

9.993e-3 represents 9.99×10-3, which is 0.00999 in decimal notation

However, many end users do not know that REDCap accepts these values. It may be appropriate to include additional instructions as per the example below.