Columnist Bethan Blakeley Tearing down barriers Y builds barriers. Barriers between us and the people who need et again, I find myself sitting here, staring at an to understand the recommendations were giving after the data empty page on Word, trying to work out how best to analysis stages. Huge walls between us and the next generation talk about the latest thing thats annoyed me about of data wranglers. our industry. Dont get me wrong, I love working in Ive said it before and Ill say it again people, generally, research and analytics, but sometimes struggle with numbers. Many see an analysts work as The source of my ranting this time is the colossal gap intimidating, confusing, full of jargon, and beyond their reach that is too often found between analytics and research, or because I was never any good at maths anyway. even analytics and the rest of the world. A gap that, Its our job to tear down those barriers. We need to be realistically, just shouldnt exist; that makes my job, making our work more accessible to the wider population, and many others jobs, much harder on a day-to-day basis. not the opposite. We need to be able to explain our findings, Yep that one. and how we got there, in a jargon-free and accessible way. I was attending a talk by a respected analyst on a fascinating We need to inspire people to want to subject and when she got to talking play with numbers, to find it about the nitty-gritty of what she was interesting enough to want to give it doing and how she was doing it, a go not keep up this crazy faade there was an awkward pause. Her We need to inspire people to that what we do is complicated and eyes shifted around the room, and want to play with numbers, technical, and only the very few then to the floor. She started her to find it interesting enough to gifted individuals among us will be explanation with, Well, I have want to give it a go able to understand. to admit If were able to do a piece of Her confession? She was using solid analysis in an accessible tool Microsoft Excel for some of her such as Excel, we should be analysis. Thats it. shouting about it, not hiding it with shifty eyes and hushed She felt the need to admit she was using Excel like it was voices. The more we can get people to engage with what some sort of big, dirty secret. Something people shouldnt do. were doing, and how, the more we will engage them in our You see the same tool snobbery time and time again, and its insights and our recommendations and the more clout our safe to say it drives me mad. work will have in the wider world. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of tools out there Its as simple as that. Its high time, as an industry, we you can use to help with your analytics. From R, Python stamped out this behaviour for good. Stop using complicated and SPSS to (dare I say it) Excel and there isnt one tool techniques when simple ones will give the same output. Stop that is better or worse than the others. I definitely have my using confusing words when it distracts from what is actually favourite tools for certain tasks. Horses for courses, if you will. important. Stop pretending we dont all use Excel for the odd But pretending that were somehow above using a tool that is pieces of analysis. arguably a bit more mainstream does us much more harm than Its high time we got over ourselves. it does good. It doesnt make us look even cleverer; it just 44 Impact ISSUE 40 2022_pp44-45_Bethan Blakeley.indd 44 13/12/2022 11:54