Hans Rosling, co-founder and promoter of the Gapminder Foundation and of gapminder.org fights with statistics against myths (‘Our goal is to replace devastating myths with a fact-based worldview.’) and tries to counterbalance media focussing on war, conflicts and chaos. Here one more example (and this in a media interview…): ‘You can’t use media if you … Continue reading For a fact-based Worldview
On October 18, 2015 Swiss voters will elect a new Parliament for the next four years. There are some very useful and also beautiful visual tools that help voters to get informed about developments in the political landscape and about candidates. . Background: The Swiss Political System The full picture of Switzerland’s political institutions and … Continue reading Elections, visual
A picture helps understanding facts – and this since hundreds of years. Investintech presents a (very) short insight in the history of data visualisation. Playfair For visualisation of statistics, William Playfair is a very important pioneer. More about William Playfair in this blog post: Filed under: 031 Data visualization Tagged: data, history, visualisation
Open Data is a much-debated topic and – since the Obama administration launched Data.gov on May 21, 2009 – an international competition, too. Nearly 400 Open-Data Portals emerged meanwhile. But very often there is more concern about the number of published data than about the content of these data. GODI This issue has been addressed by … Continue reading From Quantity to Quality
The historical research uses statistics since ever. And Official Statistics are a favourite source for quantitative historiography and digital humanities. ‘Statistics are more than just numbers’ Statistics New Zealand depicts the history of the capital Wellington with a popular format – an infographic. ‘In 1865, following a period of heated debate, an independent tribunal of … Continue reading More than just Numbers
Mid-December 2014 Statistics Switzerland launched its first digital publication for tablets (iOs. Android) and (and!) browser, in French and German. The name for this publishing category is ‘DigiPub‘. . In App Store and Google Play DigiPubs are provided via the SwissStats App available on Apple Store and Google Play (Windows to come later ). .. … Continue reading DigiPub
In OECD’s brand new publication ‘Government at a Glance 2015’ we can find a new indicator: The OUR Index. It stands for ‘Open, Useful, Reusable Government Data’. ‘The new OECD OURdata Index reveals that many countries have made progress in making public data more available and accessible, but large variations remain, not least with respect to the quality … Continue reading Open, Useful, Reusable
What’s the problem? Which data are needed to solve it? Who gets an advantage of it? These few questions are valuable key for implementing the open data culture. Open data not as ‘l’art pour l’art’ but in a pragmatic approach, demonstrating that the ‘proof of the pudding is in the eating’. It seems to work … Continue reading The Cui-bono Approach to Open Data
How to find out user needs? Which method to choose? These questions find an innovative answer in an article from Ilka Willand (of Destatis, the German Statistical Office) published in number 31 of IAOS’ Statistical Journal Beyond traditional customer surveys: The reputation analysis Authors: Willand, Ilka DOI: 10.3233/sji-150866 Journal: Statistical Journal of the IAOS, vol. … Continue reading Basic Needs and Delighters
Big Data is THE topic of the freshly published Statistical Journal of the IAOS – Volume 31, issue 2. . Five articles deal with Big-Data topics: International collaboration to understand the relevance of Big Data for official statistics Web scraping techniques to collect data on consumer electronics and airfares for Italian HICP compilation The production of … Continue reading Big Data and Official Statistics
