[SOLVED] Changing decimal in forest plot to midline decimal

Changing decimal in forest plot to midline decimal

In my forest plot conducted with the forest()-function in the meta-package, I need to change the decimal points of the reported estimates and confidence intervals from normal decimal points (e.g., 27.3) into midline decimal points (e.g., 27·3).

Is there any way?

I did not find any information on midline formattting in the RDocumentation or the internet. A similar question for the metafor-package remained unanswered since 2014: https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2014-July/376390.html

Solution

The thread you linked to actually has a bunch of responses (see here). As I suggested back then, using options(OutDec=<>) can work. Back then, I suggested using options(OutDec="\xB7") but this may not work. Instead, you could try directly specifying a midline decimal symbol with options(OutDec="·"). Running the following code on my machine works just fine:

data(Olkin1995)

m1 <- metabin(ev.exp, n.exp, ev.cont, n.cont,
              data = Olkin1995, subset = c(41, 47, 51, 59),
              sm = "RR", method = "I",
              studlab = paste(author, year))

options(OutDec="·")
forest(m1)

I tested this under Windows and Linux.