Numbers speak in tongues

Computer assisted reporting is to most journalists what aplomb is to Amy Winehouse: unchartered territory. Like so many of my peers in qualitative research, I have a love-hate relationship with quantitative research, in no small part due to my number-crunching stage fright. I have taken a number of statistics courses but always loose myself in the mathematical complexity of the matter.

Enter Sprekende cijfers. Technieken voor computer assisted reporting (Talking numbers. Techniques for computer assisted reporting). In just 192 pages, Daniël Van Nijlen and Bartel Volckaert illustrate the why, the what and the how of working with data sets in a very accessible and lucid style. Packed with realistic examples and Excel how-tos, this book is a highly recommended read – if you speak Dutch, that is.