Assuring Accuracy

Welcome back in this final lecture in section 3 we are going to look at assuring accuracy or avoiding the common pitfalls of inaccurate data recording. So that’s as always. Have a look at the band descriptors and see what they say about this. Instead of looking at the band descriptors for band surfing though let’s look at the band descriptors for band 6 and here an extract from Tasca achievement presents an adequately highlights key features. But details may be irrelevant inappropriate or inaccurate. Now in the last lecture we were looking at that idea of irrelevant or inappropriate in this lecture. We’re focusing on that key word inaccurate. So this lecture will focus on how to achieve accuracy by looking at three key areas of caution ensuring that our band score does not drop from a seven to eight six perhaps even go above and beyond the 7 to begin with caution number 1 units of measurement. Have a look at this graph to the right. It measures how much money the governments of four countries spent on developing turist infrastructure. Now there are a few things going on here but there are two important things to notice when it comes to units of measurement. Number one the currency we’re looking at is euros. You can see that in the y axes information. Number 2 the units are in millions. And that comes straight after the symbol for euros. Now what I often see with students in writing corrections or in lessons is that they will use either the wrong currency. For example they might say that Germany spent 30 million dollars or they might forget to use any currency at all so they might say Spain spent 60 million. It’s also common to miss the unit millions. So some people will say France spent 20. You’re one of course is 20 million euro. All these are examples of inaccurate data as a result of carelessness. So do be careful. Another common error is to describe numbers instead of percentages and vice versa. Those are two different things. Numbers and percentages are quite different. So do make sure to take into consideration what your graph is measuring. The second thing to be cautious around is spelling. Now if we have a look at this table here we have some very very simple numbers. There is no complex units of measurement. The figures are only a maximum of four digits and there really shouldn’t be any danger of inaccurately recording that information. But a common mistake particularly when presenting places is to mis spell categories. For example Farnborough Whitcomb Carlisle. You can see all the spelling mistakes that have crossed out. If you look at the table on the left you’ll see why these are wrong. So be very careful to accurately record place names and other less familiar spellings. And always keep this in mind when describing maps which will give you the titles of different places. This is a problem because not only does it damage your task achievement because of inaccuracy but also your lexical resource school because of mis spelling. Those two categories together make up 50 percent of your school. The final thing to be cautious around is when making comparisons. It’s very important that you make comparisons when describing the data as is the key requirements of the task. But these comparisons also need to be accurate. Let’s have a look at this pie chart here. Looking at the percentage of total car sales in London in 2012 it would appear to be a very simple chart in terms of comparisons. All the numbers are either larger or smaller than or equal to others and the chunks of the pie are bigger or smaller or the same but areas commonly appear when attempting to compare multiple figures which is a good thing to try to do because it covers more data saves time and is a little bit more advanced. But here is where the problem lies. Tell me if this is true or false. There were twice as many Mercedes sold in 2012 as renos and Audi’s. Is that true or false. That is false. The reason is that we should not have the conjunction and. But we should have the conjunction or there were twice as many Mercede sold in 2012 as runners or Audi’s. You can see the figures there. Audi has a number of 14 percent. Renault also has 14 percent while Mercedes has 28 percent. If you put the two together which will be and then the rhinos and Audi’s make 28 percent on their own. You know when combined. So if you doubled up you get to 56 percent. So it’s not double. But if you say renos or Audi’s you’re looking at them individually. So there are twice as many Mercedes as renos because you are 28 percent 14 percent. And likewise for Audi’s. So you’re going to be very careful to make this into a true statement. One way that you can avoid this inaccuracy or guard against it is to remember the three A’s. This is an idea of giving yourself a buffer against getting things wrong it gives you a margin for error. Again let’s return to this first line graph and focus in on 1990. Looking at Spain and Germany look at this point. What figure is that. Exactly. It’s quite hard to tell. So here this is where it’s quite useful to have the three A’s approximately around about with these three adjectives along with the word roughly. You can guard against complete inaccuracy gives you a buffer against inaccuracy. Let’s have a look at an example sentence in 1990. Spain’s spending hit a low of approximately 40 a million you’re a figure which also happened to be Germany’s peak in the same year. So by writing approximately 48 million we’re saying that’s what it kind of looks like it might be wrong but it’s certainly around the area now to make sure that you do not use this form when the number is very clear. For example you would not say that in 1980 Spain spent approximately 60 million euro because there’s a very clear point there is right next to the number. But when you’re not quite sure. Use one of these expressions and that will help you to maintain your accuracy.