Introduction

Welcome to Visualizing Statistics, a part of the Summer 2020 workshop series for the Center for the Advancement of Students & Alumni (CASA).




About This Workshop

This week, you’ll learn about fundamental concepts in data science, statistics, and analytics, as well as how to visualize your findings using spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets.


Not every career makes heavy use of these concepts and tools, but basic data literacy is critical for most careers, as well as the various ways we consume data, statistics, and visualizations in our daily lives.




About Our Data

Throughout this workshop, you’ll practice analyzing and visualizing data the breadth of vocabulary of various hip hop artists, as well as the most influential hip hop tracks of all time. You can learn more in these sources:




Workshop Objectives

By the end of this workshop, you should have a basic understanding of the following:

  1. Working with data tables in common spreadsheet software

  2. Different kinds of data and how they are formatted

  3. Basic statistics for summarizing and reporting data

  4. Selecting and creating data visualizations

  5. Refining data visualizations for clarity and efficiency




About Your Instructor

This workshop was created by Jamison Crawford, MPA. He is an Institutional Research Associate at Georgia State University’s Graduate School and Center for the Advancement of Students & Alumni (CASA), as well as a Faculty Associate at Georgia State’s Andrew Young School, where he teaches Coding in R, and a Faculty Associate at Arizona State University’s Watts College, where he teaches Foundations of Data Science.


Jamison has been designing instructional material and teaching adult learners for nearly ten years. He earned his graduate degree in Public Administration at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs.




Data, Data Everywhere

Whether you’re aware or not, you’re already an expert at consuming and interpreting quantitative information - or information related to quantities.


Every day, we see and use data to learn more about the world.


Challenge: Explore the following images.

  • How are data depicted?

  • What information can you glean from each image?

  • What do you like about each visualization?

  • What’s confusing about each visualization?



Sports

A slope chart comparing 2016 and 2017 wins among NFL teams (Pauley, 2018).




Finance

The NASDAQ market summary for Activision Blizzard (2019).




Bills

My power bill from National Grid (2019).




Fitness

Sleeping patterns from my Fitbit app (2019).




Politics

Presidential polling by FiveThirtyEight (2019).




Travel

The route from Buffalo, NY to Syracuse, NY with Google Maps (2019).




Games

Weapon statistics from Tom Clancy’s Division 2 (Hall, 2019).




Weather

Weather.com’s forecast for Syracuse, NY on February 24, 2019.




Nature

The lifespan of a tree, quantified (measured) in rings (Gersema, 2017).




Music

The Pudding’s “The Largest Vocabulary in Hip Hop” (2019).





Discussion

Now that you’ve had an opportunity to see data “in the wild”, it’s easier to understand just how common data, statistics, and visualizations are in our daily lives. Where else do you see data in your life and how has it enabled you to learn and make decisions?


We’ll harness much of the power of data, statistics, and visualizations and learn how to communicate big ideas with evidence and visual communication, as well as how to consume and interpret these ideas from others.


Again, your future career(s) may not involve analyzing or reporting data, but it most certainly will involve interpreting data presented by others.


Challenge: Read the following quote popularized by Mark Twain.


There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.


Instructions: Answer the following questions:

  1. What do you think the author meant with these “categories”?

  2. How might this workshop help in confronting these and other “lies”?

  3. Four books’ titles allude to this quote (see below) - why?

    1. “Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists”

    2. “Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics: The Manipulation of Public Opinion in America”

    3. “Quotes, Damned Quotes… Some of Them to Do with Statistics”

    4. “How to Lie with Statistics”