Anna Bombak, Chuck Humphrey, Lindsay Johnston and Leah VanderjagtUniversity of Alberta

The Winter Institute on Statistical Literacy for Librarians

Demystifying statistics for the practitioner

Outline

Introductions Statistics and data: what are we talking about? Definitions, standards and metadata Official statistics: national Official statistics: international Census geography and small area statistics Non-official statistics

Summary When looking for statistics, think about a

likely data source from which they would be produced and the likely agency that would produce such statistics.

Use the official and non-official classification to help identify producers of statistics.

The path toward official statistics takes you to governmental sources.

The path toward non-official statistics takes you to commercial and non-governmental organizations.

Non-official statistical sources

Marketing and consumer research Academic research Private research institutes Professional associations & unions Trade organizations Special interest groups Commercial statistics vendors Non-governmental organizations

An example: political corruption

A patron wanted to know the level of political corruption for the countries of the world.Who would produce such a statistic?What possible data source would exist?

From the perspective of international investors, this is a useful statistic.

The Political Risk Yearbook A pathfinder at Princeton on Economic and

Political Risk

Business statistical sources

Economic Statistics Provincial/National/International

Industries Companies

Publicly traded Private

Commodities Prices Trade

Consumers Marketing

Consumer patterns

Exercise 7 makes use of two non-official consumer surveys to support marketing research. You will be asked to find the number of households with cats or using products for cats nationally and internationally.

Formats for statistical information

You have seen over the past two and a half days a variety of formats used to disseminate statistical information, including HTML, CSV, IVT and XLS.

Which one should you use? Your patron’s context should come first.

How does she/he intend to use the statistics? Does she/he have software to use the format?

Proprietary versus open format. Avoid display formats (eg., HTML) over content delivery formats

(eg., CSV)

Citations for statistics

Gaetan Drolet, a retired data librarian from the University of Laval, worked part-time for DLI compiling a citation guide for Statistics Canada. This has been officially adopted within Statistics Canada and has its own catalogue number: 12-591-XWE

Examples: Source: Statistics Canada, Survey of Financial Security (SFS). Census, 2006 E-STAT

Summary of strategies Gov publications approach

What agency would produce such a statistic?

Does the mandate or goals include the scope of content?

Who are the members of the agency, if the agency is a membership organization?

What jurisdiction responsible for this content?

Is this likely an official or non-official statistic?

What publication titles are related to this content?

What is the availability of statistics from the agency

Data librarian approach What data source would be

used to produce such a statistic?

Who would collect such data? What unit of observation

would be needed to produce such a statistics?

What would the structure of the table look like given time, geography and attributes of the unit of observation?

Would the source be in the realm of official or non-official statistics?

Use the literature trail and its indexes (non-official vs. official publications)

Chart of numeric information

Statistical confidence

Confidence a mathematical concept and it’s an attitude.

We have been more concerned the past three days with the latter than the former. Statisticians will deal with the confidence intervals associated with the release of statistics. You should now have confidence to help patrons find statistics.