Test questions – regardless of delivery method – must meet two important criteria:

• They must have validity. This means they test what you say they’re testing.  If you’re qualifying someone to do CPR, you must provide valid testing that truly measures a person’s ability to perform CPR in an emergency.  You don’t want to be measuring a person’s ability to memorize an acronym or to perform a tracheotomy.
• They must be reliable. This means that if someone takes the test today, he’ll answer the same as he did yesterday – or will tomorrow.  It also means that the person, his background, the time of day, the method of delivery, etc., will not affect the answers.  The only thing that should alter the answers is the actual understanding of the subject.

Think of each of your questions as a thermometer.  To be valid, it must measure temperature, not weight or decibels.  To be reliable, it must read 32°C when it is in fact, 32°C, regardless of the relative humidity or other ambient conditions.

How do you create test questions that are both valid and reliable?

• Test the Topic
• Keep a Poker Face
• Mix It Up

Test the Topic, Not the Ability to Do Word Puzzles

Bad Question #1: Don’t confound things by asking two questions in one. Don’t get tricky. Don’t ask irrelevant questions.  Don’t write questions like this one:

Which of the following statements is not true?

A. The grass is green and the sky is blue
B. Neither grass nor the sky is blue
C. The grass is green or the sky is blue, but not both
D. All of the above
E. None of the above

Seriously? I don’t even know the right answer to this question.  I’m not even sure there is a right answer!

Better Question #1. If you’re teaching the science of color, you want to ask questions about why grass appears green or the sky appears blue. You don’t want to test the ability to reason through a maze of “not”, “or”, “and”, “all”, “none”…

What explains the appearance of a blue sky of varying shades during the day?

A. Scattering of sunlight by air molecules
B. Oxygen molecules are blue
C. The sun lightens the darkness of space, making it appear blue
D. The blue color is not real; it is an optical illusion

Better Question #2. If, on the other hand, you’re teaching logic, you’ll want to make each choice require the student to reason through it.

Which of the following statements is true? Check all that apply.

A. Grass is green and the sky is blue.
B. Grass is green or the sky is blue.
C. Grass is green and/or the sky is blue.
D. Neither grass nor the sky is blue.
E. Neither grass nor the sky is green.

Keep a Poker Face.  Don’t Give Away the Right Answers.

Novice test writers often give away the correct answer by putting too much into it.  It’s easy to get excited about a concept or just want to really get the point across.  It’s hard to put that much effort into the wrong answers, so they are often silly afterthoughts. This reduces the validity of the test by making it obvious what the right answer is, even to someone who knows nothing about the subject.

Bad Question #2: Too long to be wrong…(and confounding by including so many terms in one choice)

Which one of the following is true?

A. Good leadership is a matter of opinion.
B. Poor leadership (no demonstration of values, inconsistent, poor decision making, unavailable or unapproachable) in the workplace can result in poor performance for the entire organization, at all levels.
C. It is difficult to define leadership.
D. Leadership is not necessary if the team is solid.

Bad Question #3: Silly wrong answers…

Choose three of the five core emotions:

A. Joy
B. Beer
C. Anger
D. Love
E. Ice Cream
F. Sadness
G. Football
H. Fear
I. Baseball
J. Shame

Better Question. The wrong answers should not only be plausible, but they should represent some of the most common misunderstandings surrounding the topic. This will provide you with true information about how well the students understood your lesson and gives you an opportunity to reinforce the concept with your feedback.

From the following list, select the five core emotions:

A. Anger
B. Shame
C. Fear
D. Love
E. Hate
F. Joy
G. Depression
H. Sadness
I. Laziness
J. Pride

The letter “B” might be your favorite choice, but make sure it is not always the correct choice.  Vary the position of the correct answers in your questions.  Also, be grammatically consistent; don’t give the correct answer away by making it the only one that flows as a sentence with the question.

For more examples of how to improve the wording of a question, check out the Guide to Objective Tests at the Computer Aided Assessment Centre.

Mix It Up to Keep Them Thinking

Limit True/False questions. They can become hypnotic and don’t afford you with the ability to learn specifics of what the student doesn’t understand.

Open ended questions (fill in the blank, short answer, and essay) can be hard to grade. They should never be used unless just one person grades all submissions and that person is an expert in the field. The last thing you want is a non-expert searching for “key words” the way a computer would. That would be testing the student’s ability to win Buzz Word Bingo, not whether there was an understanding of the topic.  After all, it takes true understanding to paraphrase.

Use multiple choice questions with varying formats. Use “check all that apply”, “check the one that does not apply”, “choose only one”, and even an introductory scenario with a few follow-on multiple choices. Use common misconceptions as wrong answers.

Be creative (not tricky!) with matching questions. Have more possible answers than questions (uneven left and right columns) so it doesn’t become a process of elimination.  Include common misconceptions as possible matches.

Test Designer has a great reference page for what type of question to use, depending upon your intent.

Stay tuned for an upcoming post on the merits and pitfalls of shuffling questions and choices.

*For more on using Moodle quizzes and testing in a business environment:

• Demystifying Moodle Quiz Settings Part 1: Appearance
• Demystifying Moodle Quiz Settings Part 2: Strictness
• Demystifying Moodle Quiz Settings Part 3: Feedback
• Assessing the Effectiveness of Business Training

Or maybe we should be moving backward.  My grandmothers grew vegetables in their gardens and took cloth bags to the market.  They wrapped gifts in plain brown paper or nothing at all.  Sounds a lot like today… They didn’t recycle – let alone throw things away – they reused everything.

Not that long ago, offices (and even police stations) ran smoothly on file cabinets filled with index cards. A “bank book” was the size of a passport and covered years of transactions. Compare that to a bank statement today where 29 days worth of transactions requires 5 pages, printed front and back.  When information was stored on index cards and written out by hand, people were more selective about what information they maintained.

Paper wasn’t the only thing they saved.  They saved time by not having to search through so much stuff. And as the adage goes “time is money”.

Today, it is so easy to print, fax, copy, and save that we are buried in piles of nothingness.  Here are some ideas on how we can move forward by taking a lesson from the past.

1. Keep your policies and procedures online. You should do this anyway, for document control purposes.  To help people follow them, create job aids – posters, quick reference guides, badges, mugs, you name it – with important reminders. At AwarenessIdeas.com you can create your own or select from their sizeable collection.  Titles might include:
   • Leaving For the Day? Turn it off.  Lock it up.
   • Protecting Company Assets
   • Protecting Intellectual Property
   • Identifying Stroke in a Co-worker
   • Before You Call IT, Did You…(a troubleshooting guide)
   • Avoiding Colds and Flu This Season
2. Encourage employees to find information online instead of photocopying everything.  You’d be surprised how many owners’ manuals, users’ guides, and even recipes are online!
   • Work with your IT department to “allow” these websites (like epicurious.com) and tell employees to share their recipes and photos electronically.
   • Many larger companies are setting up internal “social networking” sites for employees to do just that. It is possible for a small business to as well, using Facebook, for instance.
   • Not only will you save paper, you’ll also save ink, money on parts and maintenance, time wasted while the machine is being serviced, and extend the life of your copiers/printers.
   • You will reduce landfill needs, disposal costs of hazardous materials (all electronics, including batteries, need to be disposed of carefully), and all of the costs associated with the production and shipping of a replacement machine.
3. Encourage your employees to save, not print, emails.
4. Store your accounting and tax documents electronically. You’ll reduce the time you and your bookkeeper spend transcribing data (it’s already online) and you’ll have a reliable “paper trail“.  The US Government began requiring electronic payments to all contractors more than a decade ago.  If they can do it, so you can you!
5. Stop using fax machines and accept electronic signatures.
   • If you need receipts from your employees, have them scanned.  Scanned documents have a longer life than those horrible little shiny paper things.
   • Adobe offers a digital signature on PDF forms.
   • Have a lawyer draw up a paragraph that essentially says “by typing your name here you are placing your signature on this document”.
   • These documents can be stored easily and they don’t require faxing or mailing.
6. Provide filtered water at the office. Water is healthy and it’s good to make it accessible so everyone will drink enough of it.
   • Offering bottled water for sale or for free is nice, but not enough.  Americans use more plastic and throw away more bottles than the rest of the world combined.  It’s shameful.
   • Install inline filters (under $100) and keep a supply of new filters on hand.
   • Order up some stainless or BPA-free Nalgene bottles or porcelain mugs (which work for coffee, too) with your logo or company mission on them. Give them out to employees or sell them, with proceeds going to a local charity.
7. Use wireless components only when necessary. If a DSL cable or USB mouse is feasible, use it.  Wireless components need batteries; batteries create hazardous waste, cost money to buy, and use resources to produce.  If you must use batteries, use rechargeable ones.
8. If your employees wear uniforms, consider switching to washable fabrics. Dry cleaning fluid is a dreadful thing and it takes time to drop off and pick up clothes.  If you must use dry cleaning, choose one such as Green Earth Cleaning.
9. For those times you really can’t do without paper materials (such as advertising and invitations), make sure your printer uses responsible papers and inks.
   • The Greg Barber Company is an eco-friendly printer.  Check out the seed paper invitations they did for the NFL.  Very cool idea!  They also have biodegradable banners, for your next company picnic or trade show.
   • Another alternative is elephant dung paper.  A search of that phrase shows that you can buy it just about any where!
10. Travel with the environment in mind. If your business is in the New York City metropolitan area or you travel there for any reason, check out Firefly Concierge.  This is a service dedicated to sustainable living, working, and visiting in The Big Apple. If you’re traveling to other locations, search on “green travel” for similar services.  What happens in Vegas not only stays there, it also impacts the environment there.

Additional Reading

For more ideas, more posts:

• For tips on paperless enrichment of your webinars and eLearning courses, read this post at Penny For Your Thoughts.
• To learn how to calculate your training (both face to face and online), check out this post at Penny For Your Thoughts.
• For ideas to save paper, other natural resources, time, and money in your meetings, seminars, and workshops, check out You’ll Save More Than Trees, Part I: Meetings, Seminars, & Workshops

To learn more about ways to reduce paper usage and to read some of the stunning statistics on waste, check out these sites:

• Water bottle usage at EarthPolicy.org (this site also has datasets that can be sorted and otherwise analyzed)
• Paper shocking statistics from TechSoup.org
• Paper usage in the US
• More paper related statistics by Environmental Paper Network.  Includes data on regional usage, end products, recycling, and impacts.

Sites to help in your sustainability efforts:

• Get widgets for your websites from the EPA.  To see examples, visit my Leave a Legacy, Not a Footprint site
• Ways to reduce paper in your office from the EPA

The truth is, I look things up online first and in books second.  I rarely (never) turn to my old training binders for information.  They did not undergo the same scrutiny as that of a published book.  Frankly, they aren’t very good.  Even the training binders I created, which I thought were really good when I wrote them, aren’t anything special by today’s standards.  Their online counterparts are a whole lot better.  I will keep a few of these for sentimental reasons.  But that’s it.  I will not create any more, print any more, or suggest to others that they print any.

Let’s forget the three inch thick binders, the impossible to read printed slide presentations, and the tons of paper handouts that have become a part of business training.

Let’s put our resources (including money and space) to better use, while giving our students something they can use long after they leave our workshops.

Here are some ideas to “save trees” and make your students happy:

1. Thumb Drives. Purchase them in bulk, with or without your logo.  Load each one with your presentation, useful links, drawings, tip sheets, etc.  The students won’t have to lug a big binder or piles of paper home in their luggage (or take the time to ship them) and they’ll have your information at their fingertips – literally. PrintUSB.com sells wooden thumb drives to reduce the use of plastic.  CustomUSB.com offers them in custom shapes.  Really inexpensive USB drives are available at any office supply store.
2. Online Documents. Some large corporations and government agencies do not allow the use of thumb drives for security reasons.  If this affects your participants, place your documents online with a service such as Google Docs or Box.net.
3. Commission Flexigroup to produce a slide chart or wheel.  These use far fewer materials than a training binder; people are likely to “play” with them, learning in the process! For proof of how fun they are, check out mine on Training Footprints.
4. Instead of handing out your entire presentation, which has limited value without your delivery, create some “tip sheets” with the salient points of your workshop.
   • Hand out a small card like this one made from fruit tree pulp – or use one of the ideas below – to provide the web address and login information to attendees.
   • Or, you can limit access to these documents to those students who subscribe to your newsletter or other mailings, like I did on this site with my eBook.  Simply provide the login information in the final welcome email.
   • You can hand them out instead of the entire workbook.
   • You can laminate them or bind them up as quick reference guides. A service like Kinko’s can do this for you.
   • Vistaprint offers photo books for very reasonable rates for low quantities.
   • How about making a deck of playing cards from them, such as these Night Sky playing cards (for a course in astronomy).

Some topics that would make great quick references in any of the above formats, with or without illustrations:

• 10 Steps to Financial Freedom
• The 5 S of Lean
• Quick Reference Guide to XYZ Software
• Safely Jump Starting a Car Battery
• 7 Stretches to Do at Your Desk
• Checklist for a Successful Sales Call
• 10 Ideas That Save More Than Paper
• Survival Tips for Hikers and Hunters
• Identifying counterfeit money

Additional Reading

• For tips on paperless enrichment of your webinars and eLearning courses, read this post at Penny For Your Thoughts.
• For ideas to save paper, other natural resources, time, and money in your everyday practices, check out You’ll Save More Than Trees, Part II: Everyday Practices
• To learn how to calculate your training (both face to face and online), check out this post at Penny For Your Thoughts.

One of the most common “rookie mistakes” in building Moodle course content is copying from a document or web page and pasting directly into the HTML editor (WYSIWYG) window. Behind every formatted document is a set of code that tells the browser or other application how to display the content. These instructions range from font size and color to line spacing and bullet shapes.  This code is not visible to you unless you go elsewhere to see it.  In an HTML editor, such as those found in Moodle or WordPress, you can switch views. 

This view can be a scary place for beginners, so most people (myself included when I was new at this) immediately switch back to a more familiar place; one with icons for Bold, Italic, Underline, bullets, and hyperlinks. 

What does it matter?  Well, the appearance of websites is controlled by cascading style sheets (CSS).  Those files set the font characteristics (color, size, and family), bullet styles, background colors, border colors, and many other aesthetic features of a site. These settings are the defaults so that the user doesn’t have to do so much work and the theme can be changed without affecting the content.   (For an explanation of themes and content, read this post.) 

You can override the settings in a style sheet through the HTML editor.  For instance, if I want to make this text Bold and Bee Gold, I manually change the font by clicking on the bold and the text color icons.  Just as you set the default fonts in your desktop applications, you can do that for your Moodle site; this is accomplished through the theme’s CSS.  You should keep your overrides to a minimum, though.  If you copy/paste directly from other applications, you may be overriding your CSS without knowing it.

An example of how ignorance can be bliss:

I have copied a paragraph from Word into the WYSIWYG window on BeeLearn.com and it looks fine, right?

Appearances can be deceiving!  Here’s what it looks like in the HTML code view.  Notice all the extra stuff and this isn’t nearly as bad as some of the pages I’ve seen!

What I have essentially done is to override all of the settings of my CSS.  I’ve told Moodle that I want that font to look exactly as it does in my Word document.  I should be using the default fonts and colors that my CSS sets.  If I change my theme (the CSS is part of the theme), my content won’t adjust.  My Bold and Bee Gold text will remain that way.  The font will stay as Trebuchet, even if I try to make it Georgia.  Quotation marks and ampersands might show up as boxes instead of punctuation.  Some browsers may not recognize the commands, so they’ll substitute other stuff; stuff I did not want.  The code view should look like this:

If and when I change the theme, which might have a dark green background, white font, and white bullets, the content will change with it.  The only thing that won’t change is the Bold or Bee Gold that I added manually. Whether I change the theme or not, I can be sure that my content will display nicely on most browsers; something that is not likely with all that crazy formatting behind the scenes. 

What should you do if your courses are built in Word, PowerPoint, or some other desktop application? 

1. Copy/paste from any document (MS Office, PDF, etc.) into Notepad or some other text editor.  Some formatting will carry through (like line and page breaks), but most will be scrubbed.  Then copy/paste that text into your HTML editor (WYSIWYG).  You will have to reformat the bold, italic, etc.
2. Copy/paste from your document into the HTML view (the code side).  You’ll have to do a lot of formatting, but you won’t have any rogue code.  Switch back to the WYSIWYG window to do the formatting.
3. In Moodle 1.9, after pasting from Word, click on the Clean Word icon in the WYSIWIG window. In Moodle 2.0, click the paste from Word or paste plain text icons which will bring up a smaller window; paste into that. Your formatting will be “scrubbed” of the bad formatting. 
4. Copying from another web page is a really bad idea.  First and foremost, unless that web page is yours, you do not have the right to copy it!  Content is copyrighted by default; there is no need to have a copyright notice.  If it specifically states that you may copy it or if it is your page, you still don’t want to copy/paste it.  The code is very messy and the appearance very much out of your control.  Do not do this!  

This might sound like a lot of work (and it is) but you’ll learn tricks and if you’re like me, you’ll get into a rhythym…select all, copy, paste, click, copy, paste, siss boom, bah!

If you’re thinking it would be easier to just link your existing desktop files in your Moodle course and avoid all this hassle, read What eLearning is NOT.  Remember, anything worth doing is worth doing well.  Creating a clean, robust Moodle course is definitely worth the effort!

The Original BeeLearn.com Home Button

I learned Moodle because I had a full curriculum of face-to-face training in Six Sigma Quality Improvement tools and I wanted to put it online. That was 2005.  I built one course and asked for feedback from a group of potential users.  Because everyone I knew professionally at that time was barely able to use email (sorry, guys, but it’s true!), my sample audience was small, biased, and not representative of my target audience.  Oops.  The most frequent comment I received was “I wish it had better navigation because I don’t know how to get to the next page”. So, I built navigation buttons because I THOUGHT that would encourage more people to take my courses. Each page had HTML code added to the end of the content; code that linked tiny images to absolute URLs for the next, previous, and other pages. Each page was manually coded.  Spiffy.    

Instead of having a surge in Six Sigma students, I was swamped with all kinds of questions from people trying to build Moodle.  Questions like “how did you build those navigation buttons?” and “are those buttons part of your theme”…  I also had a lot of other comments about my site being clean and well-put together, but the biggest comment was always about the buttons. That’s when I decided to add moodle content development to my company’s repertoire of services. Those buttons launched my Moodle career…    

As you may have guessed, adding HTML code to the bottom of every page, and editing that code so that the next page image was actually linked to the next activity, was not a sustainable task.  I stopped adding the navigation buttons to content, even on my own site.  I didn’t even dream of including them in the content work I did for others. Two years ago my editor said (quite innocently), “The buttons are missing in this course; can you put them back in?  They really make it a lot easier to navigate”.  Oops, again.    

Fast forward (time does fly) to 2011 and the navigation buttons are now a plugin that you, too, can use!  Davo Smith, Moodle Contributor Extraordinaire, turned my vision into a Third Party module, now available for 1.9x and 2.0, at Moodle.org.  Here is a screencast of the buttons at YouTube:   

To view examples of how they can easily be customized to match a theme, check out the courses at BeeLearn.com.  This Purpose-Objectives-Goals page in the demo course Sunny Hospital, shows the old and the new, with customized new buttons. 

Both Davo and I wish to thank the iconic US manufacturer that sponsored the development of this plugin. They’re awesome!

Is your sample from your targeted population?

I have performed dozens of jobs.  I delivered phone books (back when everyone had to have one).  I baked cakes (even though I’m not much of a baker).  I roto-tilled garden plots, I sewed in a dress factory, and I sold fancy scarves to very rich ladies.  I like to do things that give me insight; insight that pays extra cash is even better. 

So when my husband passed along an article about “mystery shopping” I carefully chose an organization to sign up with.  More insight…and cash to go shoe shopping with.  Cool. 

Much to my dismay, although I signed up with just one organization, within hours I began to receive assignment solicitations from several organizations; organizations I never heard of.  I must not have read the fine print on the first one.  Oh well.  The real disappointment came with assignment descriptions (paraphrased and exaggerated just a little):

“Memorize the script we will send you.  You can use a PDA or cell phone recorder, hidden in your purse, to take notes.  Drive 10 miles through some of the worst traffic you’ve ever encountered.  Find a parking spot in one of the most crowded malls in North America. Make your way into the Upscale Shoe Salon and, following the script which may have you being an ornery witch, try on several pairs of shoes.  You must buy a pair (minimum $300), but if you want to keep them, you will not be reimbursed for them.  If you wish to return them, you must do so the same day.  After you’ve driven there, parked, shopped, bought, and returned the shoes, go back home and fill out a report with short essays on your experience.  Scan and email the business card and parking receipt (to prove you were there) to us, along with your report, within 24 hours.  We will pay you $14 for this.  If you choose to receive a paper check, there will be a $3 processing fee.” 

This got me thinking…how representative of the experience of a real shopper at this store is this “shopping assignment”?  What woman who actually has a closet of fine designer shoes is going to do all of this for $14?  Even if she were going to buy the shoes anyway, the time spent on the prep work and reports pays about minimum wage.  If the script calls for her to be a difficult customer or a repeat-returner she’ll be burning her bridges at that store. I began to question what insight the store owner was getting from this data. (Of course, I don’t have enough information to make any judgments about it). 

But it does give one pause, and not just about mystery shopper data.   

Do you know - for sure - that the data collection you do is representative of the population you want to understand?  Are your Facebook friends or your LinkedIn connections representative of the customers you have?  Are they representative of the customers you want?  If you ask patron of your restaurant to fill out a customer satisfaction survey, are the responses you receive representative of all of your customers?  What do they tell you about the people you would like to have as customers, but don’t yet? 

I had a colleague who used to say (he was quoting another colleague so I apologize to whomever actually said it first):

The only thing you know for sure is that the sample you have represents the population you took it from.  This is not to say that the population you sampled was the population you intended to study.

Unfortunately, there is no formula to ensure a representative sample.  The best defense against a bad sample is to take a critical view of a process that you understand very well.  After you think you’ve nailed it, ask another subject matter expert to look at your plan with an even more critical eye.  Then you’ll probably be OK. 

I’ll be posting more on statistical sampling.  Lots more… Follow me on Twitter or subscribe to my feed so you won’t miss the answer to the most frequently asked question about statistics:  How big does my sample need to be?

These five simple steps (as you might have guessed, they all start with the letter “s”), will not only get you organized, but they’ll keep you that way.    They must be done in this order:   

1. Sort: Separate the stuff you use from the stuff that just sits there. You have to decide how often you use something and if that qualifies it to stay at your work station (or whatever space you’re organizing).
2. Set in Order: A place for everything and everything in its place.
3. Shine (some call it Sweep): Clean it up
4. Standardize: Train everyone in how/why we’re doing this
5. Sustain: Make it easy to keep it this way. Label bins and boxes and drawers. Make sure there’s room (in the Set in Order step). Draw outlines (such as tool boards) so we all know where it goes.

For a real-life example (photos and narration) click here…    

The trouble that most of us get into is that we do the first three steps.  Every once in a while we enjoy a burst of ambition which we apply vigorously to cleaning up a space.  But within a very short while, it looks like this again:   

The owner of this desk does not use 5S!

That’s because we failed to follow through…essentially wasting all the effort of cleaning and straightening in steps 1-3.  It takes discipline, but it’s a habit worth getting into. To learn more about Lean principles and tools, enroll yourself in the Lean 101 course at BeeLearn.com.  It’s free; all you have to do is create an online account.    

*Note:  The 5S works for electronic messes as well.  How much time do you spend looking for a file and how many versions of the same file do you have stored in various places?  Mmmm…

As much as this annoys me, it is just bad grammar.  The user’s point is still communicated to me.  However, when it comes to plotting and analyzing data, knowing the difference between “whole number only” and “infinitely divisible” measurements is critical. Critical!  Choosing a tool to analyze and/or graphically represent data depends upon what type of data it is.  The wrong tool can yield wrong conclusions.    

This post will not go into which type of data is better or why; we’ll save that for next time.  For now, let’s define the two types of data that matter when using most statistical analysis and graphical tools: Discrete and Continuous.    

Discrete Measurements

 Discrete Data     

No, not discrete as in “can keep a secret”.  In this case, discrete refers to all measurements that don’t make sense in smaller portions.  You can’t divide the measurement in half - or by any amount - and have something that means anything in the physical world.  

Some examples:    

• Runs in a baseball game 
• Points in any sporting event
• Automobiles built, sold, registered, on the road…
• Students taking a Moodle course
• Seats on a train
• Bottles of wine, if you are measuring the containers, not the liquid inside
• Number of times you’ve started the engine on your car
• Words in your latest book
• Typographical errors in your latest book 

Of course, you can have an average of 3.1 points in a game, which makes sense if you know how to use and interpret averages.  We’ll get into that soon, in a discussion of the Central Limit Theorem.  For now, let’s stick to the actual measurements, not their averages.    

If you have five bottles of wine, using proper grammar, you would refer to the number of bottles. The number of bottles is a discrete measurement.  Inside those bottles (assuming you didn’t drink it yet) would be an amount of wine.  The volume of liquid is a continuous measurement.    

Continuous Measurements

 Continuous Data    

This type of data is measured in a way that is infinitely divisible.  Whether you want to or not, you can measure the amount of wine in units as small as a centiliter, a micro liter… or even smaller still.    

There are some categories of data measurements that are always continuous, regardless of what units we typically use:   

• Distance
• Volume
• Area
• Time
• Weight
• Money (wealth, not currency, which is discrete) 

This is where math and grammar diverge.  Even though it would be proper grammar to say “the number of pounds”, any measurement of weight, regardless of the units, would be continuous data.  Examples of continuous data, no matter how you say it in English:    

• Liters of wine, number of liters, volume of wine, amount of wine
• Kegs of beer, bottles of beer, glasses of beer…IF you are measuring the amount of beer (not the containers)
• Miles (or kilometers) to Grandmother’s house
• Age of your car (or anything), in years, months, days, millennia…
• Ink (or paper) used in the production of your latest book 

Understanding the difference between discrete and continuous (sometimes called variables) data is foundational to using tools to compile, analyze, and graphically display data.  When you’re stuck in commuter traffic or alone with your thoughts, quiz yourself on the difference until it becomes second-nature!    

If you want to hone your grammatical skills, this is a great site: Grammar Girl.    

For more on this topic, consider taking the Data 101 course at BeeLearn.com.

After a few weeks or months, the training is ready.  Courses are scheduled, participants are invited.  They have a great time, giving the instructors very good reviews. They all pass the test.  Everyone is happy, especially you. 

The following Monday, the staff is back at work, doing the same things they did before the training course.  You think it’s really cool that your employees use phrases like “the high bar on the Pareto”… 

Not to spoil your mood, but I have to ask: How is all that knowledge gained in training being applied to improve your business metrics? 

Chances are that a lot of time is being spent on data collection and chart-drawing.  The tools taught in last week’s training are driving the data and graphs this week.  If you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. 

What should be happening is that you and your employees, armed with a bit of knowledge, can determine if you need a hammer or a screwdriver, a Pareto chart or an FMEA.  Most business process improvement tools are simple to understand in examples; most are not so simple to apply in the real world. 

The purpose of this blog is to help you find the right tool for your situation; one that will help you make more money, reduce risk, reduce angst, make people happier…whatever you really want and your business really needs.  I know your objective is something more than a pretty graph! 

The first thing to do is ask yourself (and answer) these few “simple” questions: 

• What do you want to know?
• What is the problem that you need to fix or the opportunity you want to explore?
• What type of data do you have; what can you get without expending all your resources?
• Is there a tool to give you the answers that you want, with the data you have (or can get easily)?  If not, you should avoid trying to use that hammer to drive in the screw.  In many cases, it is better to not use the tool than to use it incorrectly.

What Tool and What Data for What Purpose?

Here is a table that you can use to find the best tool, given what you want to know and what you know already:

I’ll be posting on each of these tools in more detail; how to create them, how to interpret them, and what actions to take based on those interpretations. Follow me on Twitter and Facebook to keep up with the latest posts. Glad to have you onboard!