CTAAR Workshop: Writing About Numbers, with Dr. Jane Miller
Friday, October 5th, 2018
College Avenue Student Center 411, ABC
Breakfast at 8:30, workshop from 9am-12pm (Please RSVP)
Communicating numeric information is an extremely common task for university members, whether faculty, students, administrators, or staff. For instance:
- Faculty members must convey the results of their quantitative research to lay audiences and to people in "applied" professions related to their topics, as well as other academics.
- Students must analyze and communicate data on a variety of topics for their coursework, research projects, and volunteer or other extra-curricular activities.
- Administrators must present budget figures, showing how much each component contributes, trends across time, and impacts of new or existing funding formulas.
However, few people are trained in how to communicate numbers effectively, leading to many bad habits such as overuse of tables with dozens of numbers in tiny font (many of which are not needed for the point at hand!), poorly designed charts, and sentences that require readers to do the math to figure out the answer to the question behind the numbers. These and other issues with poor quantitative communication plague scholarly books and articles, lecture slides, online instructional materials, grant proposals, and budget reports alike, making them far less effective than they could be.
Prof. Jane Miller (Bloustein School), author of two books in the Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing series (University of Chicago Press), has taught workshops to many academic, research, and communications audiences. On Friday, Oct. 5 she will offer a hands- on workshop for Rutgers University members, sponsored by the Center for Teaching Advancement and Assessment Research. The workshop will introduce and demonstrate use of numbers as evidence, tools for presenting numbers, and a set of principles to help participants learn plan for and evaluate their writing (and speaking) about quantitative information. Participants will have the chance to try their hand at some example exercises to practice the new ideas and gain some ideas on how to teach those principles and skills.
See more about Dr. Miller and the book, Writing About Numbers.
To RSVP, please go to https://ctaar.rutgers.edu/workshops/register/index.php?ws=831
