We are big fans data visualization (in addition to presenting data with numbers and tables). But even the basics of visualizing data can be challenging, so it is worth thinking about how and when to use some of the simplest tools, like pie charts and bar charts. Pie charts can be particularly challenging because they…
One of the cool things about social science and marketing research is that it brings together mathematics and human behavior. Mathematics is beautiful, elegant, and abstract. It is much like art. Human behavior is messy, contradictory, and frustrating, desperately in need of a way to make sense of it. Bringing the two together – turning…
Today I saw my first “dumb election statistics” article of the season, with AP News offering this dramatically titled story: Kamala Harris’ election would defy history. Just 1 sitting VP has been elected president since 1836. We are bound to see tons of headlines and stories like this during the next several weeks. It brought…
On Monday I received media training from one of the research industry’s top professional organizations: The American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). They hired Brenda Foster, a career journalist and now a communications and PR consultant, to teach research nerds about how to succeed with media interviews when talking about research findings. First she…
Like most researchers who take data visualization seriously, I am not a fan of pie charts. But not too long ago I came across a pair of pie charts that display data in a striking and visually compelling way. Indeed, they tell a story with data better than other alternative types of charts. The story…
If you read our article a few years back ago about COVID-19, you may have noticed some statistics we cited that seemed odd and open to misinterpretation. That’s because instead of reporting the percentage of respondents who did or said something, we reported the mean of all survey respondents’ answers to a numeric scale. We…
It was a long, arduous process (and still is), but it was worth it: Versta Research has been awarded certification for compliance to ISO 27001! This is one of the most widely recognized and internationally accepted information security standards. Certification puts Versta Research among a small handful of market research and insights firms that undergo…
Personas are fictional representations of customer types, but they reflect the demographics, behaviors, goals, and motivations of people derived from real data.
An article in The New Yorker claimed that a hundred years ago most Americans died in their mid-fifties. Alas, they were fooled by a statistic and the claim is not true.
It is magical thinking to believe that charts and graphs and fancy new tools for data visualization will solve the challenge of finding insights in data.