Dear Noble Change Seeker,
You have found us! We personally welcome you to the revolution! The revolution against processes, applications, and products inhibiting and obstructing change.
The change you search for may involve personal success such as learning to play the piano or speaking French. The change solution might call for producing dramatic student outcomes like teaching a Kindergarten class how to read in one year or helping all high school students become fluent with trigonometry. Or perhaps the change you endeavor to produce involves call center specialists mastering empathy, and providing direct, relevant answers to customers. Whatever personal, educational, or business related change you seek, Chartlytics offers you the choice to leverage science and produce outcomes with the highest level of speed, precision, and compassion possible.
We're here because we think that no one deserves to feel the pain of failing to learn. Learning happens best when learners move at their own pace and can build a strong conceptual foundation in the subject matter for each step of the learning process. Failure to build a strong foundation results in disenfranchisement of the learner from the learning process.
Many strategies exist for adapting a learner's path. However, to do so, one must accurately measure the learners comprehension of the material studied or practiced. The measurement systems, processes, and tools in use today across the entire spectrum of learning are outdated at best and largely ineffective at worst.
A recent visit I had to school in the midwest demonstrated the problems with a poor measurement system. A second grade classroom contained 22 students working towards proficiency with the Common Core Standard “Fluently add and subtract within 100 using strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction.” Each day the students worked on a sheet of single digit and multi-digit math and subtraction problems. The figure below shows a row of problems a student answered and how the teacher scored her answers.
The teacher scored the student as having 3 correct and 2 incorrect answers. But a closer look shows the measurement tactic (counting the whole answer as correct or incorrect) the teacher used appears more as a blunt instrument than a sensitive, precise tool. Does a score of 3 correct and 2 incorrect best capture the student’s performance and understanding of adding and subtracting? A more sensitive way to measure the student’s performance appears below.
Notice how the more detailed “digits correct” measure better represents the learner's performance. A learner that writes 12 to 9 + 2 has made a very different error from a learner who wrote 3.
Measuring performance with precision displays concern, exacting attention, and a stewardship for future learning. At Chartlytics nothing matters more than helping learning achieve their potential.
So many schools, businesses, and individuals select measurement systems that literally have not evolved beyond the 19th century. Would you trust a doctor certified in medicine from 1895? We know the answer before you say it, “Sign me up for a double dose of leeches!” Joking aside, you can find descriptions of behavior that have the clarity of muddy water (more on that topic in later blog posts). More directly you can see time series data graphics, those where people make high stakes decisions, that come right out of the 1800s.
As an example, take a look at the chart below from the 1884 book “Investigations in currency and finance.” The time series graphic [Time-series graphics have two scales, one scale called the vertical axis that expresses a measured quantity. The other scale, the horizontal axis, displays a unit of time progressing from left to right (Harris, 1999). ] called a line graph shows the goods England exported to India. The graph shows from the early 1700s up until 1810 change (one that favors England) occurs in the value of products shipped across the seas.
The next chart comes from a 2013 article posted on the economist.com showing India’s trade with Britain. Notice that the 2013 graph does the same thing as the 1884 graphic, telling a story of change across time (change that does not favor Britain). By the way, shame on the graph makers at the economist.com! Notice all the chart errors: no label on the horizontal axis, no vertical axis label and no vertical axis line!The chart also has an improper construction ratio of the vertical to the horizontal axis (vertical axis should appear 2/3 the size of the horizontal axis). But we digress! The point to embrace - linear graph usage hasn’t change since the 1800s.
Our government (US) uses nonstandard linear graphs (NSLG) to make important decisions. Teachers all across the country use NSLGs to understand the change of students (and make high stakes decision about that student’s future). Magazines, journals, news outlets, blogs, apps, almost everyone uses nonstandard linear graphs with their limited offering of information. In some cases, the nonstandard linear graphs mislead the viewer.
You may experience one of two emotions, disbelief or shock. Disbelief that everyone still uses a graphical display unchanged since the 1800s. Or disbelief that nonstandard linear graphs frankly provide limited information and can greatly mislead the story told by the data due to nonstandardization. As a society of concerned citizens we can, and must, do better. We have too much at risk. Almost all time series decision fall under the limited purview of nonstandard linear graphs.
What's the problem with nonstandard line graphs (NSLG)?
Take a minute and think about how much you personally benefit from standards. Start with where you live. The house or building came to exist by construction workers applying standards that govern building materials, radon levels, ventilation and fire safety. Without those construction standards you could find yourself living in a very unsafe home.
What about standards for energy? Lighting, fossil fuels, and electric power have undergone testing and precision measurement for quality and safety. If we didn’t have those standards, imagine the major problems we would have filling up our car with gasoline (sidenote: if you have a Tesla please take me for a ride - I love your fine electric vehicle!). Gasoline could contain elements that make it destructive for engine life and dangerous for you to breathe.
We could go on and discuss health standards, transportation standards, and many other facets of life that we all take for granted. But what about graphing? What standards do we have for the whole entirety of time series displays? Only one widely used visual display system, the Standard Celeration Chart (SCC).
The SCC came about based on the work of a truly brilliant scientist and American hero Ogden Lindsley. The SCC gives us a standard with the ability bring the science of measurement to all of us. Behold the SCC in all its graphical glory!
The SCC offers many, many more advantages and information content than NSLGs. Scientific literature explains why the SCC offers more and better information when it comes to time series graphics. If you would like to harness the power of better decision making for yourself, your child, or your client, you have found a home.
Business with a social agenda
At Chartlytics we have one fundamental mission pervading all of our products: contribute to improving society through effective change. The Chartlytics mission breaks down into two components, how to engineer change and what “effective” change means.
How to orchestrate change involves the following process:
- Precisely identify behavior to target (we call it pinpointing)
- Measure behavior with physics-like precision (we love precision)
- Display the measured behavior with a standard visual display (like an EKG* for behavior)
- Keep trying to resolve any problems (we root for every learner and agree with Jason Nesmith, we will “Never give up! Never surrender!”).
All of the previously mentioned steps come from a science of individual measurement boasting a 50 year body of experimental evidence (i.e., Precision Teaching).
Effective change means reaching goals as quickly as possible. Chartlytics uses a suite of Standard Celeration Charts to accomplish rapid change. The standard charts tell the chart reader how fast the behavior has changed, how smoothly the presence or absence of an intervention affects the behavior, the quality of the behavior change, and the clear identification of outliers.
We posses the technology to revolutionize time series graphics and help usher in an age of more responsive decision making. Through our product line we offer not only relevant solutions, but a method for standardizing time series graph display decision making. Chartlytics can tell you:
- how fast has the behavior changed (a standard measure like miles per hour - everyone can understand it)
- the quantified smoothness or level of difficulty a learner experiences with a particular intervention (the difficultly level tells the chart viewer how much a learner has struggled)
- the quality of the performance change (just like a quality management approach, you can see the quantified amount of quality improvement or decline in behavior)
So much more information awaits your discovery. As we add blogs and more products we will continue to explain how our services help you get better at what you do.
Meet the Crew at Chartlytics
Whenever a person makes a bold claim or offers a product touting incredible success, like we have done, you should do two things - ask for the qualifications of the person making the claim and then look for any evidence backing up the assertion. We live in a society where people make outrageous claims (Eat as many cookies as you want and lose weight; Make thousands of dollars a day by sitting in your basement playing Candy Crush). People who make these claims have flashy websites, talk like smooth car salesman (no offense car salesman who sold me my first four wheel death trap that doubled as garbage truck, you were honest), and have no experience or background in their stated product line.
Meet Rick Kubina, the handsome, hard-working, and charming co-founder of Chartlytics (thanks Mom for contributing that sentence). Rick has worked as a Professor at Clarion University (1999-2000) and The Pennsylvania State University (2000-present) teaching courses on, and researching, the science of individual measurement and performance/learning improvement. Before becoming a Professor, Rick did his undergrad at Youngstown State University where he first learned about Precision Teaching and how to best measure and display individual behavior. Then he went to The Ohio State University were he earned a Masters degree in special education further learning about measurable superior educational practices and how to best understand effective change procedures. After working for three years as a behavioral specialist and special education teacher he went back to Ohio State and earned his doctorate. Rick has conducted research, mentored students, and published papers and books on the science of graphical display and powerful performance change methods. Rick has an awesome wife, three children in college, and boatload of student loan debt he still pays from his 15 years after his glory years as a student.
Meet Dave Stevens, the daring, well-grounded, and tech-savvy co-founder of Chartlytics. Dave has extensive experience with computer technology and many things we find in the land of the Internet. Dave worked as an independent consultant helping technology startups grow their businesses, chief architect of a .com company, and founded and sold his own service content management company. Dave spent many years and many dollars at The Pennsylvania State University majoring in computer science (and Rick suspects beer drinking). Dave has spent much of his professional career carefully navigating the emerging technologies of growth in our growing digital community. Dave’s computer science experience ranges from working with hedge funds to construction equipment companies. Dave, like Rick, also has an amazing wife, and three equally awesome children, one who just arrived on planet Earth within the current calendar year.
Thank you for reading our blog. We would love to hear from you. And please share your stories with us, we draw our inspiration from your success!