Ask a question - Countdat

Ask a counter anything in plain English. The answer comes back as a page - the number, what it means, and the charts that show it.

You don't need SQL or a report builder. Ask a counter a question the way you'd ask a colleague, and Countdat's analyst reads the counter's rows and writes the answer as a page.

#Ask

Pick the counter. On the home page, choose a counter - it becomes the featured counter, with its suggested questions beside it.
Tap a suggested question, or type your own in the Ask … anything box. On a phone you can tap the microphone and say it instead.
Send it. A new question takes about a minute to answer. Questions someone has already asked open straight away.

Suggested questions for the Question Count counter above a box reading Ask Question Count anything, with a microphone and a send button — Suggested questions for the **Question Count** demo counter, and the box to ask your own.

#What's on an answer page

At the top: the counter's name, the number, and a headline that answers the question in a sentence. Under the headline, a line on how much it rests on - so a figure from three rows isn't mistaken for one from three thousand.

Answer header for Party Drink Orders: 41 drinks ordered. Soda was your top drink, with 11 of 41 orders. The lead is small, with soda only 2 orders ahead of wine. — "Which drink was ordered most often?" - the number, the headline, and how much it rests on.

Below that come the charts, tables and cards that show it. Countdat chooses them for the question - a ranking gets a bar chart, a spread over time gets a card per hour.

A bar chart of orders by drink type beside cards showing orders by local hour and the two counting runs — Charts and cards from the Party Drink Orders answer "Drinks ordered".

#Laid out for a phone or a wide screen

The same answer rearranges itself for the screen it's on - side-by-side on a laptop, stacked on a phone.

The Party Drink Orders answer on a phone, with the header, the access bar and a horizontal bar chart stacked — The same answer on a phone.

#Ask it something else

At the bottom of every answer, Ask it something else lets you ask the same counter a new question. Underneath, the counter's other questions:

Answered - open straight away. Here marks the one you're reading.
Not asked yet - suggested questions nobody has asked. They take about a minute.

Ask it something else panel with a question box, three answered questions with their counts, and one question not asked yet — Three answered questions on Party Drink Orders, and one not asked yet.

#Good questions to try

Kind	Examples
How many	"How many this week?" "How many incidents are still open?"
When	"What's the busiest hour?" "What was our biggest coffee day?"
Which	"Which day sells best?" "Which drink was ordered most often?"
Change	"Is it going up?" "What changed since the last check?"
Who	"Who tapped most?" - when the counter records who tapped

#When the data doesn't have it

If a figure isn't in the counter's rows, the answer says so rather than inventing one. That usually means the counter needs another field, or another source of rows.

#Want it different?

Each answer stands on its own - there's no follow-up thread, and an answer's layout isn't edited in place. To change the angle, ask a different question: "busiest hour on weekdays only" rather than "now only weekdays".

Try it now: the demo counters on app.countdat.com can be asked questions without an account. Next: answers don't go stale - see Answers stay current.