Click the picture to read the Handbook in Google Docs.

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Official Statistics could …

… give a little help as this topic has been discussed on many occasions and has led to several documents:

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Source: Statistical dissemination and communication (DissComm) – UNECE.

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Some reflections about Statistical Storytelling …

— may also contribute

Storytelling revisited. IMAODBC Vilnius 2010

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A data journalism seminar (in German)  may be seen as a kind of handbook too:

Datenjournalismus. Übersichtsseminar mit praktischen Übungen zum Thema Datenjournalismus, Wien 18.11.2011

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And now: A Data Journalism competition

‘The European Journalism Centre, a non-profit based in Maastricht, has been running data training workshops for several years. It is producing the Data Journalism Awards website and administering the prize. “This new initiative should help convince editors around the world that data journalism is not a crazy idea, but a viable part of the industry,” says Wilfried Ruetten, Director of the center.

Projects should be submitted to http://www.datajournalismawards.org. The deadline is April 10, 2012. Entries should have been published or aired between April 11, 2011 and April 10, 2012. Media companies, non-profit organisations, freelancers and individuals are eligible.

–> More

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

One of the problems we have in England and Wales is that the small area geography used to disseminate our statistics is largely meaningless to users. While many users might know their postcode, it is unlikely that they will know their statistical output area codes (mine is E02004729, since you asked). Although there is valid reasoning behind this geography (it is stable, hierarchical and optimised for statistical homogeneity), there is no doubt that, for most users, we need to add context to make the statistics more meaningful.

One of the outputs I am responsible for at ONS is the “small area income estimates”, and last year, with the aim of improving how users could interact with our data, I investigated using online mapping tools to display these estimates. The product I ended up using to create these maps was the Google Fusion tool (which I can highly recommend).  Several iterations of the map were published. They use a combination of the basic map produced via the online tool as well as HTML,CSS and some JavaScript (to add styling, tables, legends, branding, opacity etc). You can see the latest iteration of the map here.

The beauty of this approach, from my perspective, is the way it opens up small area data by making it more useable – by adding the context that our own geography hierarchy lacks. It enables users to first find their area by a postcode/address search or by using the background mapping, and then observe the estimate for their area and see how it compares to areas around them. Using mapping techniques like this will allow and encourage a much wider audience to explore the data compared to large static tables full of obscure geography codes.

Whilst I’m happy with what has been achieved so far, this is still work in progress. There are several enhancements I would like to make to the tool when time allows, including linking to the data source via an Application Programming Interface (API), rather than uploading it manually.  ONS is currently developing an API which will potentially make this kind of product much easier to produce and maintain. This kind of approach shouldn’t just be restricted to maps either – for example, we are keen to investigate adding charting and interactive tables to add further context. Keep an eye out on ONS’ interactive content page for further examples and future developments.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 35,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 13 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/HTMLDocs/dvc15/london2.svg

One of the reasons Flash has been so popular in recent years has been its better performance when dealing with complex animated/interactive content. But this map is easily handled by modern browsers (under Google Chrome, in particular, it flies along) – the excuse to use Flash for this kind of content is diminishing. Even better, because the content is based on open W3C technologies, it will work on any compatible browser, including mobile devices (e.g iOS 5+, Android 3+). Given the recent abandonment of mobile Flash by Adobe and the momentum towards greater mobile browsing, the rise of open standards for data graphics seems irresistible. And as a final bonus, there are some great visualisation libraries being put together which will make producing data graphics using these technologies even easier.

Here at ONS’ Data Visualisation Centre, we loved SVG a decade ago – so we’re really looking forward to re-working some of our existing Flash-based graphics back towards HTML5/SVG in the coming year – I’ll try and reflect on some of the experiences of doing this in a later post.

Mobile – social – open data and metadata –  making data findable and attractive (visualisation!)!

mobile

‘Web technologies have become powerful enough that they are used to build full-featured applications; this has been true for many years in the desktop and laptop computer realm, but is increasingly so on mobile devices as well. A W3C document summarizes the various technologies developed in W3C that increase the power of Web applications, and how they apply more specifically to themobile context.’

See also this blog post about mobile: http://blogstats.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/mobile-is-not-the-future-its-now/

social

There a lots of opinions and predictions about the role of social media. Here’s one in 11 points:

Many statistical agencies use social media, mostly as an additional information channel.

I.e. UK http://www.facebook.com/statisticsONS and nearly all are on twitter

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open data and metadata

The open (government) data movement gained further momentum in 2011 and will do so in 2012, too.

See also:

• Berners Lee speaking http://blogstats.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/linked-data-its-not-a-top-down-system-berners-lee-and-opengov/
• open data and official statistics: A presentation http://www.box.com/s/y0b619ro3b3m0oppx61x
• and a blog post  http://blogstats.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/open-data-some-perspectives/

findable and attractive

Finding the appropriate data in three clicks and understanding these data is a eternal challenge – not only for officuial statistics’ websites.

A lot has been done. See the new websites of Italy (ISTAT) and others (please update the information about new websites and put the links in a comment, thanks). More to come 2012 as Germany (destatis), Australia and Denmark and others (please … ) plan to bring their new websites.

Visualisation is a major topic in this context. Statistical offices present their interactive and visual content in overviews (i.e. destatis or FSO of Switzerland) and use more and more third party applications like NComVa (Italy, Eurostat) or Google public data (Catalunya).

Some thoughts on visualisation ..

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And there’s an issue whose importance is often underestimated. Not to forget:

statistical literacy!

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*****

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Finally, I wish you all the best for 2012!

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WebGL Bookcase.

And you are not alone in looking at it.

Seven Billion | Masters Degree Online.

See also: whats-your-number and tell-a-story-with-a-picture

Dürer’s Rhinoceros – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

But in an epistemological perspective there’s a point.  Dürer never saw a Rhinoceros; he created it – in accordance with some information he got- in the process of drawing. Statistics – in a sense –  do the same and this even with objects which do not exist in ‘reality’.

This topic is itself an object in several studies. So the Norvegians Rudinow Saetnan, Heidi Mork Lomell and Svein Hammer treat it in their reader ‘The mutual construction of statistics and society‘.

‘How does the act of counting affect the world? How does it change the objects counted, change the lifes of those who count (double entendre intended)? …  Our argument, briefly stated, is that society and the statistics that measure and describe it are mutually constructed.  This argumcnt addresses two counterarguments from seemingly opposite directions. On the one hand, we oppose the notion that statistics are simple, straighthforward, objective descriptions of society, gathered from nonparticipant points of observation…. Like all othcr specific forms of viewing, it is a social act. Counting acts in and upon the social world. Of course, this also means that not counting has an effect on the aspects of the world we (do and/or don’t) count. ….
On the other hand, we also oppose the notion that statistics and/or society are mere fictions, to bc invented at will.’  (Introduction, p.1)

And in its alltime classic ‘The politics of Large Numbers‘ Alain Desrosières treats the same question: ‘ … it is difficult to think simultaneaously that the objects being measured really do exist, and thatt this is only a convention’ (p.1)

And here’s the real Rhinoceros (Indian rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), Panzernashorn )

Statistics are not so bad .. -;) .

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/UK-government-announces-open-data-initiative-1387087.html 

‘The Open Data Institute will “innovate, exploit and research open data opportunities with business and academia”, chancellor George Osborne,’

http://www.information-age.com/channels/information-management/news/1675923/open-data-institute-to-be-built-near-silicon-roundabout.thtml

What tell us statistics about mobile use? An efficient interactive infornation offer and a quite interesting way of chart building provides

Our Mobile Planet

http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/insights/featured/understanding-mobile-users/