SUMMARISING AND PRESENTING DATA - APPENDIX ONE

Appl Statist. (1986) 35, No. 3, pp. 237-244 Reading a Table: An Example By A. S. C. EHRENBERG London Business School. UK. ** [Received February 1985. Revised January 1986] SUMMARY In reading a table of numbers it helps to focus first on the variation in a single row and a single column, preferably of summary figures such as averages or totals. This then provides a base for looking at the rest of the data. Keywords. Looking at Numbers; Visual Focus; Averages or Totals; Main Variation; Memorable patterns. 1. Introduction Many people have at times to look at a table of data to see what the numbers are saying. As statisticians we may be quite good at this. But we usually take our reading skill for granted and do not talk about it very much. We therefore do not find it easy to teach others. This note tries to develop some precepts in terms of a specific example. It concerns a table about paper tissue which was shown to me by a journalist who was then in the paper industry (Ehrenberg, 1984). She had just received it from a Finnish source (without any supporting text) and asked: "What do I do with this? I can't just reproduce it in my article, can I?" In starting to tell her what the table was saying and how one could get at this, I quickly realised that I had seldom tried to explain this process to others. Nor did there seem to be much literature on it—Wright (1981) for example mainly discusses formal tables rather than statistical ones. Section 2 therefore now describes what I did in reading the table, as a personal case-history. Subsequently this appeared representative of what I do more generally and also seemed to make sense to others. Hence this note. Section 3 then discusses an improved lay-out for the table, using earlier rules or guidelines like rounding and ordering by size (e.g. Ehrenberg 1982). This should make the data easier to read. But reading a given table, whether quite well laid-out or not, remains a separate process from improving it. **Address for correspondence : Professor A. S. C. Ehrenberg, London Business School, Sussex Place, Regent's Park, London NW1 4SA, UK. © 1995 1986 Royal Statistical Society