Level: Foundation (F)

It has been asserted that ‘the purpose of a scientific paper is to communicate, and within the paper this applies especially to the presentation of data’ (Altman & Bland, 1996) and effective data presentation is an essential skill for anybody wishing to display or publish research results. However, good display does not always happen in practice and when done poorly, it can convey a misleading or confusing message.
 
This 3-hour course is aimed at individuals who need to understand how to display and interpret data, and it is hoped that by the end of the course they will have a greater understanding of the methods available for displaying data and the tools to display data appropriately and clearly, with the use both graphs and tables.
 

Learning Outcomes

The purpose of this course is to introduce the principles of good design and layout to the presentation of data, as an aid to better understanding and to learn about appropriate methods for displaying and summarising data.
 

Topics Covered

• Types of data
• Summarising data
• Displaying data
• Tufte’s principles for the visual display of quantitative data
• Common problems/errors in displaying data
• Presentations and posters

The course will incorporate lectures and discussion, with several practical sessions. The practical sessions will involve both individual exercises on tabulating and displaying data and small group work critically appraising the tables and graphs in published papers. Participants may bring their own data to discuss.
 
 

Target Audience

 This course is for anyone who is involved in communicating statistics to non-statisticians or who reports on data – of any description – within organisation, to specific communities and to the general public where a message is being given.
 

Prior knowledge/experience required

Dr Jenny Freeman

Jenny Freeman manages the Maths and Statistics Resource Centre at the University of Sheffield and has over 15 years of experience of teaching statistics, particularly to beginners. Prior to this she was an associate professor of Biostatistics at the University of Leeds and a senior lecturer at the University of Sheffield. For her PhD she was involved in producing growth reference centiles for UK children. Her current role stems from a longstanding interest in how students learn statistics and understand the core concepts. She is especially interested in the communication of statistics to non-statisticians and the way in which data/information/statistics are displayed. She is the recipient of two Senate awards from the University for the excellence of her approach to learning and teaching and the first winner of the Keith Boddy Prize for best educational paper in the journal ‘Scope’.