I thought I would take a moment between arcs to mention a pet peeve of mine. It has to do with publishing numbers as if they were facts. Let me give you an example; "...76.2% or 84 million homes, up 28.4% over 2004. ...at the end of 2005 was 36.3 million, up from 28.8 in 2004."
What do these numbers mean? They are statistics, of course, but what do the numbers mean? Why did someone chose them to put down on paper, electronic or otherwise?
My first thought when I see numbers in an article is "What's the basis of these numbers?" Once that is answered, I quickly follow with "Do these numbers correspond with other numbers I've encountered in the same or similar disciplines?" Next in line is "What is the source of these numbers?" This inquisition goes on and on and on.
NextStage also publishes lots of numbers. Readers of this blog and my IMedia columns know I include graphs, charts and figures from NextStage's research. I hope that each time I do so I include a statement like "The homepages were downloaded with IE 6.0, Firefox 1.07, Netscape 7.2, Opera 8.51, SeaMonkey 1.05 and Flock 0.76 on Saturday, Oct. 28, 2006. Analyses were performed by NextStage's TargetTrack tool and research staff." (from How to Build a Super-Sticky Homepage) or "...some 30 sites chosen at random from our monitoring system." (from Listening to and Seeing Searches).
Based on the questions I ask when I see numbers I should also let readers know that sometimes NextStage's data comes from specific verticals, sometimes gender samplings, age groups, locations, ... The list can get quite extensive. I should also let readers know when tests were done on a few people versus a few hundred, several thousand or tens of thousands. In all cases, the data comes from sites in NextStage Evolution's Research programs.
I'll endeavor to answer my own questions when I publish numbers in the future. Wouldn't do to tick myself off.
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