2. Learning Outcomes
Completion of this session will enable you to:
• appreciate that numbers are a critical
component of everyday life
• understand how numbers can be created,
represented and interpreted in social life
• explore how quantification of an issue can
help us understand a complex issue
• learn some basic statistical concepts
3. I Couldn’t Live Without My Mobile Phone
• What influenced your choice of
mobile phone
• How did you know whether you
were getting good value for
money?
• How did you make comparisons
between different deals?
4. I Couldn’t Live Without My Mobile Phone
• When purchasing a mobile phone, you most likely considered at least some of the
following?
– How much does the phone cost?
– How much will it cost me per month?
– Could I save money per month by paying more for the phone ‘up front’ (or vice versa)?
• You probably considered other aspects of the phone as well such as the
manufacturer and model, design of the phone, what apps were available etc.
• But we often need to be able to inform everyday decisions by making sense of
numbers
• This ‘making sense of’ often involves comparing numbers in quite sophisticated
ways
• If understanding and using numbers is part of what we do already, then how do we
develop the confidence and competence to use numbers in our professional lives?
5. Who wins with supermarket loyalty cards (or
how do large companies use numbers to
influence our behaviour)?
• 85% of the UK population have a supermarket loyalty card
• A year after Tesco introduced the Clubcard, card holders
were spending 28% more in Tesco and 16% less in
Sainsburys (who then introduced their own loyalty card)
• In 2009, 15 million Tesco customers received £259 million in
vouchers
• 80% of supermarket profits come from 20% of customers
• At Tesco stores, if you spend £100 per week (£5,200 per
year) you will earn £104 a year in grocery vouchers or £312
worth of Clubcard rewards.
6. Who wins with supermarket loyalty
cards (or how do large companies use
numbers to influence our behaviour)?
Using data from loyalty cards,
one supermarket reportedly
identified a trend for fathers to
come into stores on their way
home from work on a Friday, in
order to buy nappies for their
children.
As a result, the store placed six-
packs of beer on the adjacent
shelves, and found that the sales
of beer went up.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8505031.stm
7. Definitions
• Number: a unit of measurement
• Statistic: a numerical value or number
• Quantification: the act of counting and
measuring that maps observations and
experiences into members of some set of
numbers
• Statistics: the study of the collection,
organisation, analysis, interpretation, and
presentation of numbers
8. Using numbers to quantify, describe
and explain
• There are many ways of using numbers to
explore a particular problem.
• Three examples will now be given of how
numbers can be used to understand:
– Rates of hate crime
– Educational attainment and ethnicity
9. The example of hate Crime in England
and Wales
• How widespread or common is hate crime in
England and Wales?
• Start by exploring this link and the associated
data
10. Social Construction of Statistics
• But how does a ‘hate crime’ come to be recorded?
• Definition of an act as a crime
- by an individual, by society
- for example, speeding
• Detection of that act
- was it reported?
- to whom?
• Response to the act
- warning v prosecution
• Recording of the act
11. The example of educational
attainment and ethnicity
• 65% of pupils in primary and secondary schools in London
are of ‘ethnic minority’ background
• Groups long considered underachievers include in particular
Pakistani, Bangladeshi and African Caribbean, although more
recent studies have also identified similar educational
problems among Somali and Turkish-speaking pupils.
• In 2003, for example, roughly 70% of African Caribbean
pupils left school with less than five higher grade GCSEs or
their equivalents. This represents the lowest level of
achievement for any ethnic group of school children
12. The Example of educational
attainment and ethnicity
• But how do we know that certain groups of children are
achieving worse educational outcomes than others?
• The answer may seem relatively simple – we simply record
how many GCSEs the child gets, the grades they achieve and
their ethnicity…..don’t we?
15. The factors influencing educational
attainment
• The previous slide seems to confirm that children from some
ethnic groups do better than others but it also shows variation
between different places (e.g. in Hackney as compared with the
whole of London) – what might explain this?
• Language skills
- English as an acquired language seems to have an impact for
some BME groups more than others
• Poverty
-more pupils in London are entitled to free school meals: 25%
of primary school children and 22% of secondary school
children, compared to national averages of 13%.
On average, pupils entitled to free schools meals have lower
levels of attainment than others.
16. Continued
• Level of ‘churn’ within schools
- about 14% of Inner London pupils change schools in
an average year, as do 6% of Outer London pupils,
compared to 5% elsewhere.
• Expectations of pupils
-black boys are three times more likely than other
pupils to be excluded from school. One factor is that
their family background or street culture makes them
badly behaved. The other is that schools treat them
differently. largely unwitting but systematic racial
discrimination in the application of disciplinary and
exclusions policies
17. Learning Outcomes
Are you able to:
• appreciate that numbers are a critical component
of everyday life
• understand how numbers can be created,
represented and interpreted in social life
• explore how quantification of an issue can help us
understand a complex issue
• understand some basic statistical concepts
19. Activity
• Read the following article - Benedictus, L. (2013) Unreliable
statistics of 2013. The Guardian 29th December. Available
at:
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/dec/29/un
reliable-statistics-of-2013
• Consider:
– What are the key lessons we should take away from this article?
– How does this article help to demonstrate how statistics can be
socially constructed?
– How might statistics be accurate and yet be used to give a
misleading impression?
– How can you become a critical consumer of statistics and how
might this help strengthen your practice?
20. References
• PART (2012) Taking The Path Less Travelled:
Critical Thinking For Child Welfare
Practitioners. Practice and Research Together,
Toronto.
• Available at:
http://partcanada.org/uploads/File/Guideboo
k/PART-CRITICAL-THINKING-GUIDEBOOK-
FINAL---PRINT-PDF.pdf
