Date: 2025-05-02 Page is: DBtxt003.php bk009051400
ACTION INFORMATION FOR ALL OF SOCIETY
Metrics about the State, Progress and Performance of the Economy and Society
Metrics about Impact on People, Place, Planet and Profit
Chapter 5 - ACCOUNTING'S KEY CONCEPTS
5-14 COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
Importance of multiple datapoints
The importance of multiple datapoints applies in spatial analysis just as it does in other techniques of analysis. It may not be easy to know exactly about something ... or the complete story about anything ... but most often, it is relatively easy to tell something be reference to what it is in another place.
If you have one datapoint it is a whole lot better than having no datapoints. If you know a person is 4 feet tall ... that is a lot more information than not having any height measure at all.
If another person is 5 feet tall ... there are now more datapoints ... and more questions ... and the beginning of some answers.
Perhaps ... is one person taller than the other because of age difference? Or is it some other factor?
If someone weighs 70 kg that is a potentially useful datapoint ... if they weighed 50 kg a year before, then the two datapoints are very useful. One datapoint tells only the status at one point in time or place ... two datapoints enable one to know what is different between two datapoints.
If the datapoint shows a bad situation at one point in time ... a better datapoint later is progress in the right direction.
One datapoint ... and two datapoints
There is a substantial amount of mathematics and statistics around data analysis ... but there is a lot that can be learned by simple plots of comparative data. Simple plots answer some big questions very easily ... but the data are needed.
Accountancy argues for more data that are simple and easy to understand ... and Community Accountancy argues for having more and more of the data with a community focus. If you cannot understand what the simple data shows ... walk around the community and see what is missing.