Bad Math Crushes Great Content
You have opened that high priced graphic editor and you are all set to get moving developing a wonderfully innovative infographic. You might have encountered them around the internet so you may understand just how useful they can be. Making use of a few pie graphs as well as some smart numbers your content should go viral very quickly!
The visual representation of large amounts of information and their relationships convey more than blocks of text with numbers stirred in. With only a few seconds to convert a visitor to a reader, written reports lose out while an elegantly designed infograph can amuse and educate. After all, most visitors to your site are looking to kill time looking at something entertaining. An infograph can leave your readers wanting to Tweet, Tumble and Share your site over and over.
However, a mathematical error can ruin all your hard work by making you seem like the nitwit instead of the expert. You thought mixing statistics from multiple third-party reports sounded like a good way to strengthen your overall conclusions, but were unpleasantly surprised. And now there are people commenting and challenging what you thought was an insightful analysis.
Understanding the basics of research procedures and statistical process can help prevent such embarrassment. Before they can gather statistics for their report, each research team must determine the factors guiding the research. Even simple categories like "male" and "female" may include different people depending on the researcher's definitions.
To avoid disaster, don't use data from multiple studies unless you have access to the raw data. It's possible to present data from separate studies if you do so carefully. Remember you can't compare percentages if they are not percentages of the same thing! Twenty-five percentage of a pizza is not the same as twenty-five percentage of a hotdog!
The visual representation of large amounts of information and their relationships convey more than blocks of text with numbers stirred in. With only a few seconds to convert a visitor to a reader, written reports lose out while an elegantly designed infograph can amuse and educate. After all, most visitors to your site are looking to kill time looking at something entertaining. An infograph can leave your readers wanting to Tweet, Tumble and Share your site over and over.
However, a mathematical error can ruin all your hard work by making you seem like the nitwit instead of the expert. You thought mixing statistics from multiple third-party reports sounded like a good way to strengthen your overall conclusions, but were unpleasantly surprised. And now there are people commenting and challenging what you thought was an insightful analysis.
Understanding the basics of research procedures and statistical process can help prevent such embarrassment. Before they can gather statistics for their report, each research team must determine the factors guiding the research. Even simple categories like "male" and "female" may include different people depending on the researcher's definitions.
To avoid disaster, don't use data from multiple studies unless you have access to the raw data. It's possible to present data from separate studies if you do so carefully. Remember you can't compare percentages if they are not percentages of the same thing! Twenty-five percentage of a pizza is not the same as twenty-five percentage of a hotdog!
About the Author:
Learn more about applying data to creative works. Stop by Dan Gordon's site where you can find out all about selling more books by crunching numbers.
0 nhận xét:
Đăng nhận xét