Imagine that different types of data are different people that you are interviewing for a job. The job is to answer a specific research question. You want to know what their qualifications are—will they do a good job? Are their strengths a good match for the task? Like we’ve mentioned before, if there are issues …
Correlation ≠ causation Data are pieces of information, like the number of books checked out at the library or reference questions asked. Those pieces of information are simply points on a chart or numbers in a spreadsheet until someone interprets their meaning. People create charts and graphs so that we can visualize that meaning more …
Correlation doesn’t equal causation (but it does equal a lot of other things) Read More »
Average is one of those statistics that comes up a lot. What does it mean? How can we use it? What are its limitations? Today we’re going to talk about both the average, also known as the mean, and another statistic called the median. Means and medians are both ways to find out what’s typical …
It’s hard to know who you can trust out there. “Fake news” is now a prevalent concept in society and the internet makes it possible for anyone to publish—well, anything. As library professionals, you’ve probably already acquired a great deal of experience determining the credibility of sources. Many of the same skills are needed to …
Welcome back! We’re excited to have you with us on this data journey. To work with data, it helps to understand specific concepts—what is per capita, what is an average, how to investigate sources. These are all valuable skills and knowledge that help you navigate and understand data. What you may not realize is that …
As our brains process information, we constantly make comparisons. It’s how we decide if something is good or bad—by it being better or worse than something else. However, like apples and oranges, not all things can readily be compared, even if they appear similar enough on the surface. We often make this mistake with data …
Hello, world! We can all agree that these are strange times we are living through. Here at the Library Research Service, we’ve been thinking about how we can help. What skills could we share that might be useful to library staff and our communities? As library and information professionals, before this pandemic we already spent …
New blog series: Between a Graph and a Hard Place Read More »
