I am presenting a table in my paper which summarizes and compares data from other papers. I'd like the data to be presented uniformly, with the same number of significant figures for all data. However, some of the cited papers have more significant figures in their data than others.
Here's an example: instead of presenting the table below:
| Smith, J. | Doe, J. | Anon, Y. | My data |
|---|--------------|------------|----------------|------------|
| X | 1.42+- 0.31 | 1.3 +- 0.1 | 1.314 +- 0.287 | 1.4 +- 0.2 |
| Y | 1.43 +- 0.10 | 1.4 +- 0.2 | 1.421 +- 0.234 | 1.5 +- 0.3 |
I'd like to normalize the number of significant figures to make it easier to compare them:
| Smith, J. | Doe, J. | Anon, Y. | My data |
|---|------------|------------|------------|------------|
| X | 1.4 +- 0.3 | 1.3 +- 0.1 | 1.3 +- 0.3 | 1.4 +- 0.2 |
| Y | 1.4 +- 0.1 | 1.4 +- 0.2 | 1.4 +- 0.2 | 1.5 +- 0.3 |
Can I (or should I) remove significant figures from their data, for consistency purposes? If so, can I still use the expression reproduced from Smith, J., or should I use something as adapted from Smith, J.?