Making sense of journalistic COVID-19 data visualizations: An in-depth study of two adults’ visual-numeric literacy

Abstract

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic urged authorities to share quantitative information such as infection and death rates. One way of disseminating was through graphs, maps, and diagrams. Such data visualizations communicate numeric data in compact ways, but also require a particular mathematical literacy from readers. We conceptualized this particular mathematical literacy as visual-numeric literacy. To study it, we interviewed two young adults with higher education but low confidence in mathematics and asked them to make sense of COVID-19 data visualizations from journalistic digital media. An in-depth analysis of their visual-numeric literacy revealed that the two participants had developed various sense-making strategies. Their lived experience in the pandemic assisted them to overcome obstacles in mathematical sense-making, and gain insights from the data visualizations. We discuss out-of-school mathematics learning and provide recommendations for improving adults’ visual-numeric literacy.