Statistics are meant to provide an objective data verification on whether something is working.

How useful is a library? Let’s see how many people are checking out books.

How good is this school? Let’s look at their test scores.

How good is this baseball player? Let’s look at his career averages.

Is this program working? Let’s survey the end results of those using it.

What statistics don’t measure is the impact on a single person. Take, for instance, my insane love of reading and pushing it on my students. Based purely on statistics, I would appear to be an abysmal failure with the amount of books I have vs. the number of books students are signing out of my classroom.

However, one of those books turned an ardent non-reader in my class to someone who powered through a book and raved about it. It was also the first time he’s read a book in a few years.

One of my students openly bragged about only reading six pages of a book before putting it away. He also informed me he didn’t have the stamina to read for long periods of time. Then I introduced him to The Hunger Games and he finished all three books in less than two weeks.

One student told me it was the first time she was able to read and enjoy a book without feeling pressured to do something with it. She wrote me a note at the end of the year telling me how excited she was for her summer reading.

Statistically, you were advised to never invest in a west coast publishing company in the 90s. Then one of them acquired the rights to Harry Potter.

MP3 players were an over-saturated market when Steve Jobs had the vision to enter into it and introduce the world to an iPod.

People die every day, but stats can’t tell you the impact one of those deaths has on a community.

Before you try telling me what the stats say, find out what they’re not saying. That is more eye opening than some numbers on a page.