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Reading tables and figures

Most of a paper's numbers live in its tables and figures, and every display is making an argument. A baseline characteristics table, a regression, a flow diagram, a survival curve, a forest plot — all of them can be audited with the same two questions: what each exclusion did to the population the findings cover, and how many patients the thinnest branch actually holds. A wide interval, or a number at risk that falls away, usually traces back to one of those two.

Also covered: adjusted odds ratio · odds ratios versus risk ratios · Kaplan-Meier curves · censored counts · CONSORT diagram · pooled estimate