Fun with Frequencies

RantWoman, pre-midlife vision meltdown, had NO idea that mere frequency tables could be such an adventure.

Recently the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing did a needs assessment. Many potential customers were interviewed. Data from the questionnaires was expeditiously entered into a spreadsheet. Our intrepid data tender even generated a nice document full of frequency tables showing numerous interesting findings. RantWoman used to eat frequency tables based on hundreds of thousands of records / month for breakfast. This was all before taking up with Mr. JAWS and finding many ways to get brain overload from columns of numbers speed-read with a computer-generated voice. The frequency tables tempted RantWoman to want even MORE slices and dices, but first,..., first RantWoman had the bright idea of writing an article about the findings for a small newsletter.

RantWoman had this bright idea. Then RantWoman looked at her own schedule and had the further bright idea that Totally Blind Volunteer could do thie article. Totally Blind Volunteer is a capable writer. Totally Blind Volunteer is interested in the findings of the survey. The article did not need to be very long. RantWoman figured if Totally Blind Volunteer picked 3-4 of the frequency tables and hung some mortar prose between then, that would be plenty.

Totally Blind volunteer was amenable but she needed a copy of the document. RantWoman screwed up. RantWoman emailed the raw spreadsheet. Bad, horrible RantWoman. RantWoman is more than enough of a data jockey maybe to be intrigued and certainly to be able to figure out quickly that she has the raw data and not frequency tables. Not so Totally Blind Volunteer. OOPS! OW!

Talk about infliction of PAIN! RantWoman heard Totally Blind Volunteer howling in frustration as she poked around the long rows of the raw data spreadsheet. RantWoman had to apologize and found the right document. MUCH better. Still not easy but much better: RantWoman read the document through again with JAWS and asked Totally Blind Volunteer to try again. RantWoman also had to banish Fully Sighted Data Tender from the article-writing process.

Sighted Data Tender kept trying to tell us about the contents of the tables. RantWoman supposes that Data Tender might have been asked to skim and suggest the tables that were most interesting to her, but RantWoman really wanted Totally Blind Volunteer to figure out the frequency tables and to make the call about what to write. RantWoman knew this was going to take some cheerleading...!

The newsletter editor was breathing down our necks as JAWS chattered away. Finally! An article was born. RantWoman did not exactly save any time this time around, but she is really, really hoping that the data bug will bite Totally Blind Volunteer har enough to try again. RantWoman is just a tough customer!