Vislets – new tool to communicate knowledge by publishing statistics

Vislets:  From Professor Mikael Jern, mailto: mikael.jern@liu.se
GeoAnalytics has so far focused on visual tools that analyze and explore data to discover trends and patterns. These tools should also address challenges in support of an integrated editorial and related authoring process with the goal to advance research critical to educational production and publishing. In this context, [...]

“ICT is the lifeblood of the knowledge society” – Swedish Presidency of the European Union

Extracts of slides from Hans Roslings presentation (preceding the one from Nicklas Lundblad,  former Google European Policy Manager and now Senior Executive Vice President of Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, check also the panel discussion after these two presentations):

More information about the conference and all presentations:  “ICT is the lifeblood of the knowledge society” – Swedish [...]

A happy GDP

‘What we measure affects what we do; and if our measurements are flawed, decisions may be distorted.’
‘….. there often seems to be a marked distance between standard measures of important socio economic variables like economic growth, inflation, unemployment, etc. and widespread perceptions. The standard measures may suggest, for instance that there is less inflation or [...]

World Bank public data, now in Google search

From The Official Google Blog:

11/11/2009 11:00:00 AM

When we first launched public data on Google.com, we wanted to make statistics easier to find and to encourage debate based on facts rather than intuition. The day after we launched, a friend who worked at the World Bank called me, her voice filled with enthusiasm, “Did you know [...]

SDMX and RDF: Getting Acquainted

SDMX
SDMX (Statistical data and metadata exchange) is a widely accepted standard for communicating data  in the realm of official statistics.
‘SDMX is an initiative to foster standards for the exchange of statistical information. Sponsored by BIS – ECB – EUROSTAT – IMF – OECD – UN – World Bank.’
More and more applications accept and [...]

World Bank Data Visualizer

World bank launches an interactive visualizing tool resembling gapminder, it’s called Data Visualizer.

‘The time series used in Data Visualizer is a subset of 2009 World Development Indicators database. It contains 49 indicators for 209 countries and 18 aggregates from 1960-2007. Data includes social, economic, financial, information & technology, and environmental indicators.’
Tools allow to change the [...]

International Marketing and Output Data Base Conference (IMAODBC) September 14 to 18, 2009

Only for participants. Login and password needed.
The conference is being organised by Statistics Canada. The organising committee may be contacted by email at imaodbc-organising@statcan.gc.ca

“Journalism Needs Data in 21st Century”

This is an interesting summary from ReadWriteWeb about the role of data in media with several fresh innovative examples coming up 2009.  Some of them have already been presented before as posts in this blog. The conclusion is that journalism is data-driven and demands open access to raw data. Data should be transparent and not [...]

A New View of Data.Gov

A New View of Data.Gov (from Google Public Policy Blog)
Friday, July 10, 2009 | 3:09 PM
On May 21, the Obama administration launched Data.gov, a web site that provides access to raw data from federal government agencies. Access to this raw data is useful, but to unleash the power of the data, you need tools for [...]

ReadWriteWeb Interview With Tim Berners-Lee, Part 1: Linked Data

Written by Richard MacManus / July 8, 2009 6:00 AM / 8 Comments
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How Linked Data Relates to The Semantic Web
RWW: Earlier this year you gave an inspiring talk at TED about Linked Data. You described Linked Data as a sea change akin to the [...]

Linked Data is Blooming: Why You Should Care

From ReadWriteWeb:
Written by Richard MacManus / May 18, 2009 3:15 AM
Last week we discussed how the current era of the Web is evolving. One of the concepts we noted was Linked Data, an idea whose time has come in 2009. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, gave a must-view talk at the TED Conference earlier this year [...]

Google examples of US Official Statistics

Source:http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=144522
See public data results

If you’ve ever done research involving large datasets, you know that it can take hours to comb through databases in order to find and analyze trends. Anyone who searches for U.S. unemployment rates or population numbers on Google.com will see relevant statistics and graphs included in their search results. You can even [...]

Google: Tell us about your organization’s public data

Tell us about your organization’s public data
Does your organization produce statistical information or other public data that you would like to make more accessible and easier to use? If so, please tell us about your organization and the data you now make publicly available or would like to make available, including details about its [...]

Semantic Web and Official Statistics

Semantic Web and Official Statistics – an open discussion. Some incomplete  remarks about how to  bring statistics into the Semantic Web ( I am still learning)
Introductory note: Made for machines
Semantic Web or the Web of Data is made first and foremost for machines. ‘In the future the entire web will be one giant tightly interconnected [...]

A platform for public data (1)

Some time ago Amazon web services (AWS) has opened a place for public data sets in its cloud.
‘ AWS is hosting the public data sets at no charge for the community, and like all AWS services, users pay only for the compute and storage they use for their own applications. …  AWS hopes to provide [...]

… and a Happy New Year

Here is the Figure of the (last) Week (2008 ) from Statistics Switzerland

This Flash Widget leads to a chronological overview of the SFO’s press releases, publications and new results over the last days.
See the Figure of the week on Statistics Switzerlands Homepage where the embed functionality works.

Merry Christmas and …

 

ECB Inflation dashboard

The European Central Bank has published an interactive tool that helps analyse inflation developments. In four windows various aspects of inflation development are visualised; several options allow to change the variables and also to switch to a tabular view. Impressive!
Data source: Eurostat and the EU National Statistical Institutes. Data input follows SDMX standards.
‘The dashboard consists [...]

CDATA online

October 27th 2008: ABS’ new interactive data tool is online.
2006 CDATA Online is an online tool which combines information on Australian society from the 2006 Census, with web graphing and mapping capability.
ABS’ new interactive tabulation tool has been developed jointly developed by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and Space-Time Research.
Access is free!

Widget ahoy!

Statistics Switzerland has introduced a widget on its homepage: The Figure of the Week.
This small Flash graphic is linked to more detailed information in the agency’s website.

It’s possible to copy the code and to introduce (embed) it in another webpage, blog etc. The links still leads to Statistics Switzerland’s detailed information.
Every week the widget will [...]