Did you just say e-books? Duh!

Reading Time: 4 mins

Hey there, Book Lover!

And when I say Book Lover, with all due respect, I keep the e-book readers at the bay.

So, book lovers. I am sure you find yourself amidst debate-cum-arguments on e-books vs. hard copies. So, what reasons do you bring out to justify your love for your hardbound and paperbacks? I am sure, it might be one of these:

1. Oh! The smell from the fresh pages of books. How can an e-book reader savor that “old book smell”?
2. When the zombie apocalypse hits the town and you’ll go out of electricity, how would you read “your e-book”? I might as well fight off a zombie or two swinging my sizeable encyclopedia.
3. Do you have the guts to read a complete 500-page e-book without Wi-Fi, charger, or network data? Huh!
4. Somebody’s gonna get their eyes hurt in the coming years with these Tablets and Kindles. Guess who won’t? Me.
5. You’ll never feel the pleasant tingling on the fingers turning the pages of a hard copy. Swiping pages on your Kindle – What’s that? Kindle or tinder?

And the list goes on…

There’s always a better justification

Mind it, there’s always a response to your justifications. Be it being tech-savvy, walking hand in hand with digital media, supporting digital literacy, blah-blah-blah.

What if we tell you that we have a weapon that none of your ‘hard-copy-enemies’ could ever beat?

We have the power of data and visualization to support your cause and add one more unbeatable rationale to your debate.

Data says books are good for students’ grades

Our co-founder and head of analytics, Ganes Kesari, in one of his talks revealed that having books at home can help your child improve readability and ultimately score better grades. The statement is not just a hunch but is based on the results of an education data analysis & visualization. Beat that.

The education data analysis was performed on the data of 80,000+ students. The rich data was collected nationally (India). It was then arranged according to more than 40 parameters such as parents’ education level, usage of computers, the number of siblings, number of books students read, and so on.

Such peculiar factors applied to a considerable amount of students was an exciting platform for us to play with data. To know the significant factors out of all that influence grades of students the most in their exam, we visualised the data.

More Number of Books at Home

We chose the parameters in a pair to infer the insights. A parameter is any numerical quantity that characterizes a given population or some aspect of it. Inferences are drawn by varying the selected parameters while keeping other parameters constant. From the data of 83,623 students:

• A difference of +8.2% was found for students who have 25+ books at home Vs. those who have no books at home. Students with more books score an average of 50.8% marks. Students with no books score an average of 42.6% marks. Consistent readability improvements are noticed for students with 1-10 books at home.
• We tried matching different parameters as well. By correlating ‘Number of books’ with ‘use of dictionary’, we found a difference of +8.9% for students who refer dictionaries for vocabulary improvement.

How Reading a Magazine helps

Let’s see how reading a magazine can impact the scores. Students who read magazines everyday score more than the ones who read magazines weekly or monthly.  We assume that reading magazines keep the students updated on current affairs and help them spill substantial information on examination answer sheets.

Similarly, there are a plethora of parameters waiting for you to play around and draw insights on your own. Visit our Students marks influencer interactive visualization and let us know what interesting insights you could find leveraging other parameters.

Education data analysis can offer many actionable insights. It can help schools deploy better strategies and engaging students more in reading activities. Education data analysis certainly offers great insights for parents who are looking for ways to get their kids to excel in school. Go put that to your argument and let see how the other side responds to the data-truths.

Check out more data solutions, data stories, and insights from Gramener.