From December 2022 to January 2023, the Data Literacy Seminars were held by Professor Jorge TENDEIRO, Program Manager of the HIRAKU-Global Program. With the theme of unraveling "common misunderstandings" about statistical methods used in research across various fields, a total of five in-person sessions were held at each university to which the HIRAKU-Global Researchers belong to.

At the beginning of each seminar, quizzes on hypothesis testing and confidence intervals in statistics were given to reaffirm the basic steps of statistics. Prof. TENDEIRO also explained that when statistical tests are used in academic research, they are inferences based on the data at hand and are "indirect" explanations of the theory.

Next, regarding hypothesis testing and confidence intervals, he discussed the misunderstandings of the methods and expressions for presenting results from various angles, referring to the participants' papers and actual simulation results. The revamping policy on statistical representations and practical dilemmas for various internationally renowned main journals was also discussed.

In addition, there was an active discussion on the effective explanation of research results on topics such as errors, symbols and effect sizes in graphs and plots.

Finally, Prof. TENDEIRO concluded, "The content of this training can be put into practice immediately, and some fields may not be so, but through this seminar, you will be able to read many papers containing statistical expressions from a critical perspective." The overall response from the participants was positive, with the opinion that "it gives new perspective for researchers who usually use statistical methods, and it was difficult for researchers who usually don’t use statistical methods, but it was useful because it was something they should know."

The feedback we received at the conclusion of the workshop can be viewed below (partial extracts).

• 自分の研究結果の解析に対して何が伝えられて、何が伝えられないのかという部分をより深く理解することができたのがよかったです。自分が研究を発表するということについての意義も考えるきっかけとなりました。
• This is a good program for me, I did not understand how to express results of statistical analysis. I can smoothly understand the contents because Prof. Jorge explained how to analyze data using my own data.
• I have always thought that I really need to study “data literacy” a lot more. It was good opportunity to learn it from the beginning. I learned a lot from today's lecture, but the level was a little bit high for me. I will make sure to review what I have learnt properly.
• It was good to know the limits and bad points of the techniques, which I can't see by reading textbooks.
• In the seminar, our published data was shown as examples, which was very good to understand how we should've described in the paper based on the statistical analysis of the data.