Presenting Data: How to Communicate Your Message Effectively

Chapter 1Understanding number

This chapter deals with the basics of how users perceive numbers and how they should be presented to allow maximum uptake of the meaning of the data.

A false assumption of many who seek to communicate numerical information is that their audience is as able to handle the information as they are. The available data in for the majority of OECD countries is that numeracy skills are significantly below those for literacy.

Numeracy skills in the general population in England are poor – and are not improving. Information from a skills survey in England in 2011¹ noted that Numeracy skills had declined slightly since the last survey in 2003. Seventeen million adults in England in 2011 (just under half the working-age population) were at ‘Entry Levels’ in numeracy – roughly equivalent to the standards expected in primary school. Further, the survey showed that 78% of the working-age population were at or below level 2 numeracy. These people may not be able to compare products and services for the best buy, or work out a household budget; essentially they would not achieve a good mark in a mathematics examination at age 16.

More generally, the OECD published the results of a survey in October 2013² showing that 19% of adults in 21 countries had mathematics skills at the level of a 10-year-old. These adults could only manage one-step tasks with sums, sorting numbers or reading graphs: many could only perform sums with money or whole numbers. For individual ...