A step-by-step tutorial for information professionals
In my latest articles, I famous {that a} vital problem for a lot of firms immediately is the huge quantity of accessible information and their restricted means to make use of it successfully in decision-making. The core of this drawback is especially human-driven. Due to this fact, there’s a urgent have to construct information literacy. If firms genuinely aspire to learn from even a fraction of the info on the market, they have to elevate their general competence with numbers.
88% of our potential audiences could battle to learn numbers, charts, or computations.
Primarily based on a worldwide literacy research, merely 12% of adults worldwide are numerically literate. In idea it implies that 88% of our potential audiences could battle to learn numbers, charts, or computations.¹ That starkly contrasts the world’s literacy price, which is at the moment over 86%.²
Remarkably, many societies overlook this situation. What’s extra, quite a few people take delight of their innumeracy.³ Have you ever ever heard excuses like:
I’m not a numbers particular person.Statistics have by no means intrigued me.Physics looks like sorcery to me.
Or the “final” one:
I’m extra of a humanist.
Typically, it isn’t a matter of missing means however as an alternative not having the fitting instruments. Contemplate this state of affairs:
We’re trying to cross the road. We observe site visitors approaching from each instructions. We should choose if there’s adequate time for us to cross safely. And that automobile within the distance? How rapidly is it shifting? Is its velocity growing? Reducing? Has the motive force observed us?
In actuality, crossing the road presents a fancy likelihood problem. But, we navigate it each day, typically a number of occasions, and normally get it proper.⁴
That’s simply scratching the floor.
Take into consideration driving a automobile at 60 mph. What number of elements come into play? When…