Read, Write, Think Data: A Step-by-Step Guide to Turning Data Into Wisdom by Ben Jones

The companion book to our on-demand course Data Literacy Level 2: Working Effectively with Data. Reading and interpreting charts and dashboards has become a daily task for all of us, but these days many of us find ourselves needing to work with raw data more and more often. The spreadsheets and databases we come across don’t announce their insights to us upfront. Instead, they require us to roll up our sleeves and sift them to find what’s hidden and valuable within them, like gold in a mine. Read, Write, Think Data by Ben Jones presents a tool-agnostic framework for posing powerful questions of data, preparing it for analysis, exploring what’s there, arriving at the “Aha!” moment, and then turning that insight into a compelling message that will help you drive change within your organization. The process can be followed with any tool, and multiple “how to” tutorials are included within to help you learn the ropes. “Want to learn how to read and use charts? That shouldn’t take long. How about creating charts? There are some great tools available that have short learning curves. But extracting, understanding, distilling, and accurately and ethically communicating insights from data? That’s not a trivial undertaking, but with this book, Ben will get you and your organization there a lot faster.” -Steve Wexler, Author of The Big Picture and Co-Author of The Big Book of Dashboard