S is for Statistics

This April we are once again blogging along with the A-Z Blogging Challenge. Our team of one-place studiers will be sharing some of the treasures to be found for a one-place study, particularly around the theme of Visualisation, our Shared Endeavour for 2016.

I’ve often wondered why so many people have trouble pronouncing ‘statistics’. Could it be blocked memories of those dreaded maths lessons in our school days? Just say ‘stats’ or forget the word entirely. They’re part of our everyday life and the key thing is that they make it possible for us to compare our studies with others. So we can find out how our places are similar to or differ from other places and then focus our energy on the kinds of questions that lead to new understanding.

Who is better placed to do this than people who spend hour after hour trolling through endless and almost undecipherable records or use their weekends to check out tucked away little shops in the hope of just one postcard or wait for that perfect angle of the sun that turns those eroded marks on a gravestone into words?

Fortunately, since the raw numbers are such a turn-off, people have put a lot of time into tools for easily visualising our findings.

These are the sorts of things that others can quickly look at and maybe see connections with their own research. If we’re in the Society to share and learn from others, then it seems like time well spent to think about conveying what we’ve found.

Kim Baldacchino