Data Visualisation For Teachers: How To Read, Interpret And Show Data Correctly

Abstract

Nowadays, visual information such as charts, diagrams, infographics and so forth are omnipresent in social media, presentations, online scientific papers, that is, in the digital world.

We have all heard the well-known sentence about pictures: a picture is worth a thousand words. In the context of charts, it is essential to read the information with attention and care, otherwise we may not understand the core underlying message. Thus, charts, line graphs, bar graphs, plots, etc. can provide us value information, such as trends or patterns hidden by numbers, if we properly read them. However, charts can also be, intentionally or not, confusing. Thus, we can claim that charts could lie in different ways such as a having a poor design, showing inaccurate or insufficient data, or presenting misleading patterns.

In this work, we aim at improving the teacher’s skills in detecting the poor-practice in chart creation, although much of this poor practice is not deliberate, often it is due to the lack of knowledge from the user, but sometimes it could also be by reasons ethically questionable. So, we divided this work in three stages. First, teachers receive information and material for the preparation, design, and delivery of effective and efficient charts. In the second stage, they brought to the classroom examples of charts not correctly created, and the content and message from them are carefully analysed. Finally, they modified those examples and showed in the classroom the changes and the reasons to support them.

Finally, teachers understood that the creation of charts is relatively easy, but the ways how data can represented or misrepresented is key in the communication process.