Telling Your Story With Numbers

1
Telling Your Story With Numbers
Annual Northwest Resource Sharing and
Interlibrary Loan Conference Presented by Jill
Wolf, M.Ed., Data Analyst - Brooklyn Public
Library Materials prepared by Jill Wolf and
Jeanne Goodrich. Portland, Oregon September 14
15, 2006
2
Agenda

• Data Collection What do you want to know and how
  do you get it?
• Data Analysis What does your data tell you?
• Data Presentation How can you tell your story
  most effectively?

3
Why Collect Data?

• Measure progress
• Influence Directors
• Make resource allocation decisions
• Meet data collection requirements of
• a grant project
• state library/association/federal reports

4
Collect the Right Data

• Too little isnt helpful
• Too much can be overwhelming
• The wrong data is misleading

5
Two Kinds of Data

• Quantitative (quantity)
• numeric
• measures how much and/or
• how often something happens
• Example
• Fill Rate
• Turn around time
• Number of borrows/lend per month or year

6
Two Kinds of Data

• Qualitative (quality)
• Data that is rich in detail and description
• Includes data from surveys, focus groups
• Example
• User satisfaction surveys
• Customer service surveys

7
Where Do You Get Data?

• Surveys
• Observation
• Self-reporting

• ILS/ILL system
• Published reports, ex demographic information
  from Census, PLDS

8
Data Analysis

• reading the data

9
Data Analysis Techniques

• Compare - benchmark
• Use averages medians
• Percentages
• Change over time - trends

10
Read the Data

• Look for
• Trends
• Patterns
• Highs and lows
• Anomalies

11
Analyzing Use
Raw Numbers
Actual Numbers
12
Analyzing Use
Percent Change
13
Trends
14
Patterns
Suspended service during ILS migration
15
Comparative Data/Benchmarking

• Public Library Data Service (PLDS)
• Library Peer Comparison Tool
• public, academic, school
• National Center for Education Statistics
• www.nces.ed.gov/surveys/libraries/
• Bibliostat Connect/WebConnect
• State, federal and PLDS statistics

Cool!
Google peer library tool
16
Comparative Data/Benchmarking
17
Comparative Data/Benchmarking
18
Understand average, median

• Average (mean) sum of all values divided by
  number of values
• Median the value in the middle of the data series

19
Percentages

• Percentages show the relative size of two or more
  categories.

20
Percentages
OF means DIVIDE

• Examples
• 50 is what percent of 100?
• 50/100 .50 or 50
• 10 is what percent of 125?
• 10/125 .08 or 8

21
Percentages

• Example
• Beaver State University subscribed to 5,600
  serials in 2005 but had to cut the subscription
  list to 4,725 in 2006.
• This was a decrease of 16.

New Value -Old Value Answer/Old Value Answer
x 100x 4725 - 5600 -875 -875 / 5600
-.15625 -.15625 x 100 -16 (rounded up)
In Excel -
22
Percent Change

• Last year I spent 18 of my materials budget on
  AV materials. This year I plan on spending 20.
  What is the difference?

• Answer
• At first glance, you might think the difference
  is 2 - but the difference is 11. (2/18 11)
• The dollar difference and absolute difference
  will also depend on the dollar amounts being
  talked about. In other words, 18 of x may be
  more than 20 of y.
• 20 of 10,000 2,000
• 18 of 50,000 9,000

23
Presentation

• telling your story

statisfaction
24
Consider Your Audience

• Why are you presenting to them?
• What are you trying to get them to do?
• How do they prefer to see data?
• How do you tell your story most effectively?

25
Presentation Options

• Narrative description
• Tables
• Graphs and Charts
• Maps
• Spreadsheets

26
Excel Is Your Friend

• Learn to use Excel spreadsheets and charts

27
Table or Chart?
28
Table or Chart?
Fishbone Diagram
29
Maps and Census Data
30
Column Charts
3-D Column Chart
31
Column Charts
Stacked Column Chart
32
Column Charts
Stacked Column Chart with Data Table
33
Pie Charts
34
Bar Charts
Stacked Bar Chart
35
Dashboards
36
Dashboards
37
Dashboards
38
Resources

• Blogs
• Juice Analytics http//www.juiceanalytics.com/webl
  og/
• Dash Board Spy http//dashboardspy.wordpress.com/

39
Resources

• Books
• Data Analysis with Microsoft Excel Updated for
  Office XP (with CD-ROM) (Paperback) by Kenneth
  N. Berk, Partrick Carey

40
Resources

• Books
• Excel Data Analysis for Dummies (Paperback) by
  Stephen L. Nelson

41
Resources

• Websites
• Colorado State Library and the Colorado
  Department of Education
• http//www.lrs.org/index.asp

42
Contact Information

• If you have questions, please feel free to
  contact me at
• Jill Wolf
• jillwolf1_at_comcast.net
• 503-307-1297