Working out how to present data effectively

Speaker 1: Hi Lauren, so I'm just back from the training session and I'm having a think about changing the venues.

I just wanted you to look through the feedback forms from the attendees and find out what they thought about the venue.

I've got a feedback meeting with the team later, so I'd really like to get this information soon so we can start thinking about whether we need a new venue. Is that OK?

Speaker 2: Yeah sure, no problem.

(TO AUDIENCE) OK, so these questionnaires have four questions.

I'll focus on the venue question first, which has four optional answers.

First off, I'll count the number of questionnaires in total.

Then I'll tally up the answer to the question about the venue.

OK, so there are 38 completed questionnaires.

Now to tally up the responses for this multiple choice question.

Speaker: I can see how many people chose each response now that I have collated this data.

Now I need to work out how to make these answers into a percentage as that will make the data easier to assess.

So, the first thing I'm going to do is work out that 20 people out of 38 thought it was very good.

Now I need to work that out as a percentage.

To do this I divide 20 by 38, and then multiply by 100.

I need to round this to one decimal place, so that's 52.6%.

10 people out of 38 said it was good.

So again I divide 10 by 38, then I times that by 100.

This time I'll round down to 26.3%.

4 people said acceptable, that's 10.5%.

And another 4 people said poor, so that's another 10.5%.

I'll just check these by adding them together.

That comes to 99.9%. Oh, my rounding has simplified things, but made the numbers a bit less accurate.

I must adjust them so we get 100%.

I'll alter the 52.6% to 52.7%, which makes everything add nicely to 100%.

So, I've finished collating the responses to this question, now I'll have to present this data.

Speaker: I'm not sure just using a spreadsheet is the best way of representing the findings.

I could convert the data into a bar chart, a line graph, or a pie chart. OK, which chart would be best?

A bar chart is used to compare two or more values with a small set of results.

A line graph is used to show changes over periods of time.

A pie chart can be used to show the results as a proportion of the whole.

Each response is displayed as a slice of pie and you can put the percentage for each response next to the corresponding slice.

I think a pie chart will be the best chart to use, as you will instantly see the percentage proportion of each response.

I'll see what Tiana thinks.