We Need to Fill in the Blanks in our Social Identity Data
Everytime I see a stat like “25% of respondents are Black”, I see only one piece of a four-piece puzzle filled in. With only this piece, I don’t know how to use this information. I don’t know if it matches the category from my dataset, I...
How People are Using Equity Gap Scores
We’ve said it before: When you need to know more than just a general average, you need an Equity Gap Score. An average tells you what happened and an Equity Gap Score tells you for who. Each piece of information needs the other to give meaning. If you have a...
The Power Dynamics of Data Jargon
Early in my career, I was working on a project using education data, and we were having a meeting with policymakers, school principals, and a team of researchers. When one of the principals asked a question about what assumptions were used in crafting one of the...
Learning to Love Uncertainty (Why We Need to Stop Using “Not Statistically Significant”)
I want to talk to you about why you should stop saying “not statistically significant” based on sample size alone. The term “not statistically significant” should only be applied to a hypothesis, not a sample size, and even then it’s an...