Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Dr Selena Fisk, Major Street Publishing, $32.99.
Data is all around us, with the quantities that we have access to increasing at an extraordinary rate. Living in the 21st century means you have to know your numbers and use them to advance your decision-making and improve your influence.
According to data expert Dr Selena Fisk, anyone can become a numbers person. She advocates for a world in which we are all data-informed, not data-driven.
Data is universal. Smart watches track our steps and heart rate, social media platforms recommend people we might know and products we might like, and map applications suggest when we should leave home depending on the traffic.
From organising your home budget and understanding social media metrics, to running a side hustle or a multi-national, multi-million-dollar organisation, having the mindset ‘but I’m not a numbers person’ is no longer helpful or accurate.
Fisk believes we can all improve the way we read, use and interpret the data we’re given to make better decisions and enhance our impact.
In this real-world guide, I’m Not A Numbers Person takes us through the ‘why’ of data, the types of data we often see and use in life and work and the key areas of data literacy, which is understanding the data and what it all means, and data visualisation, which is where we make the data look beautiful in tables, graphs or other visuals.
If you weren’t great at maths at school, or you feel that you need to get better with numbers, then this is the book for you. “No longer is it enough to settle for numbers not being your strength, or hope someone else will analyse and act on the data for you.”
