[Tex/LaTex] Center column headings in tabular: multicolumn not respected

horizontal alignmenttables

I would like to center column headings (and column headings only) in the following table. Why does it work with the first column, but not the second (I thought \multicolumn is the correct approach to this problem).

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{booktabs}

\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{rr}
  \toprule
  \multicolumn{1}{c}{$\alpha$} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{$\alpha=0.99999$} \\
  \midrule
  10     & 69.681   \\
         & 901.741  \\
  1000   & 893.630  \\
         & 82.806   \\
  \bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

Best Answer

This is just a little example of how you can make a small modification to your input in order to get the desired output:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tabularx}% http://ctan.org/pkg/tabularx
\usepackage{booktabs}% http://ctan.org/pkg/booktabs
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{rc}
  \toprule
  \multicolumn{1}{c}{$\alpha$} & $\alpha=0.99999$ \\
  \midrule
  10     & \phantom{0}69.681   \\
         & 901.741  \\
  1000   & 893.630  \\
         & \phantom{0}82.806   \\
  \bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

The addition of a \phantom leading 0 for numbers less then 100 makes all the numbers the same width, so centering is readily achieved.

Related Question