Data presentation is necessary as it can often be difficult to spot trends or patterns when looking at numbers alone. For example:
1,3,5,7,4,5,3,2,4,5,7,8,6,6,5,7,9,8,6,4,2,2,4,5,7,8,9,8,9,7,5,6,8,9,9,8,5,5,4,7,6,8,8,9,6,4,3,3,2,3,4,4,5,6,7,6,5,4,5,5,6,7,7,8,8,9,8,7,5,4,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,9,7,5,4,3,3,3,3,5,5,6,6,5,5,6,7,8.
This is a series of random numbers (of the range 1-9) that I typed on my keyboard for about 10 seconds; by totalling the number of times each number appears, it can be seen that I seem to have a bias of pressing the number 5 button, followed by 8, 6, and 7. This may result from me placing my hand too often in the middle of the long stretch of numbers along the top of my key board. Given that the majority of the numbers are above 5, this shows that I held my had too long towards the higher end of the keyboard. Visually, this can be seen in the following graph:
Ok, so it's not a brilliant example, but it does show how statistics can be used to spot trends. Google Public Data Explorer, Gapminder, and Tableau Public are three data processing and visualisation platforms that have been recommended by the university. Having had a play with Gapminder, and read its information page, I can confirm its a pretty interesting website. There are hundreds of data sets available to look at; education, public expenditure, mortality rates, ect. from a verity of countries, with some sets spanning hundreds of years! I have found it very interesting to watch how the populations of various countries have grown.
Any way, that's all for today. Thanks for reading :)
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