WARNING! This website is no longer actively maintained. It is an archive of 2 years work by Doug Belshaw who now blogs at dougbelshaw.com...
Data can be very useful: it can unearth hidden potential in students that don’t seem on the surface to have very much. It can also be used (as at our school) to ensure that students are performing and improving adequately and that none ’slip through the net’. However, as we all know, it can be used for nefarious purposes and tokenism.
Which is why this made me smile:
What are your experiences with data vs. reality? 
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I am a numbers person and I enjoy seeing numbers. However, at times I have to take a step back and try to understand the reality of these numbers. Trying to understand data vs. reality is something that can be very difficult. This cartoon made me chuckle as well as this can be how it really is.
Many moons ago, I used to work for a municipality (read town council) in the town clerk’s department. The TC himself was something of a control freak of the kind that installed a means of itemising each staff member’s phone usage and then getting the staff members to account for all the calls made each month.
There was a sign-in book at the front desk, which worked like a manual version of a punch clock. Part of my job was to video situations which were pertinent to reports being submitted to the council for consideration. One morning I arrived extra early to pick up the video camera and set off to video a scene before the traffic got too heavy. The book wasn’t out when I arrived (or when I left with the camera).
When I returned half an hour later, there was still no sign of the book, so I got on with my work. I was called in to the boss’s office about half an hour later to account for being later for work. It seems he had put the book out when he had arrived at 8am and then taken it away on the dot of 8:30. I explained the situation and produced the video as evidence. However, since my signature wasn’t in the book, I was marked as being absent without authorisation and docked a day’s wages. When I retorted that, in that case, I would go home for the day, I was informed that that woud get me fired!
The data don’t lie!
Yeah right.