A Language Beyond …

Hermann Burger, the so versatile Swiss writer once noted: “To be a writer means to have language beyond death”.
For Hans Rosling (1948-2017), working hard to make statistics not only understandable but also respected and used, this is equally true. Once thanks to his bestseller ‘Factfulness‘ and now also thanks to a newly launched idea: “The Project Rosling”.

Project Rosling

Project Rosling has its origin in the UN World Data Forum in Bern (October 2021) and wants to continue the spririt of this event. The project website paraphrases this as follows: ‘The Project Rosling aims to bridge the gap between the data and statistical community and a diversity of stakeholders to advance data ecosystems and provide the information needed for a fact-based worldview’.

And in even more detail: ‘The Project Rosling follows the Road to Bern, an initiative of the Swiss Confederation that aimed to prepare discussions before the 3rd UN World Data Forum 2021 in Bern and to engage the public in the 2030 Agenda (more information here). Over one and a half years, conferences, debates and activities with the general public created a momentum within the data and statistical community that the Project Rosling will seek to maintain and expand.
As such, it has two aims:
> Expand the data and statistics dialogue
> Deepen knowledge’
(-> go to source)

In memoriam

This meritorious project and its ambitious mission recall and continue what Hans Rosling pursued in his life and what was his interest and project. In an interview in 2013 he expressed himself as follows: ‘My interest is not data, it’s the world. And part of world development you can see in numbers’.

More about Hans Rosling:

Two Years Ago

You Can See in Numbers

Winners of the 4th European Statistical Competition are announced!

Over 11,000 students from 16 European countries signed up for the fourth edition of the European Statistics Competition (ESC). The ESC is a competition organized by Eurostat and volunteering National Statistical Institutes addressed to secondary education students with the purpose of encouraging students to get familiar with statistics and official statistical sources.

This year 61 teams participated in the European finals where they prepared a video on the topic »Information and disinformation: Official statistics in world overflowing with data«. Teams were very creative and demonstrated the importance of official statistical data in everyday life in various ways.

A jury of European experts selected the top five videos in both the age group 14–16 (category B) and the age group 16–18 (category A). The winners of each category will receive their prize at a virtual award ceremony that will take place on 16 June 2021.

Winning team Category A: VERDE (Portugal)

Other finalist teams Category A:

• MARIE (Belgium)
• STATHLETES (Croatia)
• PLAN_XY (Slovenia)
• STATS A-ALPEON (Ireland)

Winning team Category B: TEGLZAROŽE (Slovenia)

Other finalist teams Category B:

• LUSITANOS (Portugal)
• GIMNACK21 (Croatia)
• AEROSTATS (France)
• ESPRO (Cyprus)

Congratulations to all winning teams and their menthors!

Statistical Self-Defense

No day without numbers in (social) media, in everyday life. And they not only want to inform us, they also want to orient us in one direction or the other.

And every day are among them deliberately or unintentionally false or misleading numbers.

Therefore, statistics must arm themselves against incorrect use of data and repeatedly teach the correct handling of statistical data.

There have long been numerous works on this subject. Here is another quite basic presentation by the Dutch journalist Sanne Blauw.

She picks out five statistical sins.

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The fact that such presentations often use numbers themselves, which would also have to be viewed critically, does not diminish the value of her warnings.

Easy-to-understand Statistics for the Public

In a recently published EUROSTAT publication, the authors demand innovative forms of communication from public statistics in order not to lose their socially important role. Among other things, they demand ‘…. to tell stories close to the people; to create communities around specific themes; to develop among citizens the ability to read the data and understand what is behind the statistical process.’

Telling Stories

The UNECE hackathon that has just been completed responds to this challenge.
‘A hackathon is an intensive problem-solving event. In this case, the focus is on statistical content and effective communication. The teams will be challenged to “Create a user-oriented product that tells a story about the younger population”. During the Hackathon, fifteen teams from nine countries had 64.5 hours to create a product that tells a story about the younger population. The teams were multidisciplinary – with members from statistical offices and other government departments. The product created should be innovative, engaging, and targeted towards the general public (that is, not specialists). There was no limit on the form of the product, but the teams had to include a mandatory SDG indicator in the product.
The mandatory indicator was “Proportion of youth (aged 15-24 years) not in education, employment or training” SDG indicator (Indicator 8.6.1).‘ (Source)

Winners

And the hackathon shows impressive results, even if only a few organisations have participated.

The four winners are:

My Favourites

My favourites are number 3 from the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI-Mexico) and number 2 from the Central Statistical Office of Poland.

Why?

The Mexican solution…

…is aesthetically pleasing and easy to use. The interaction is left to the user and can be individually controlled by him/her in the speed.

The diagrams do not stand alone, but are explained by short texts while scrolling.

The results are not just being accepted. Rather, the concepts are explained and questioned – statistics are presented with the methodological background.

The Polish solution…

…starts with a jourmalistic approach. Here too, the interactivity can be controlled by the user at the desired speed.

At the end, the authors also seek direct contact with the users; a quiz personalizes the statistical data and gives an individual assessment of where the users stand personally with regard to these statistics.

Success Factors

The two applications mentioned above combine decisive user-friendly features:
– visually attractive,
– easy-to-understand navigation that can be controlled by the user according to his needs,
– the journalistic approach,
– concise and instructive explanations,
– personalization,
– hints on the methodological background.

Many of the other applications show the frequently encountered weaknesses: Too much information should be provided, no courage to leave something behind and concentrate on the most important elements. And this leads to long texts and complex navigation with the effect that users quit quickly.

AoS: The new Atlas of Switzerland … and more

On June 20th, 2016 the moment arrived to unveil the new Atlas of Switzerland (AoS):

Simone Niggli-Luder (orienteering athlete and multiple world champion), Sarah Springman (Rector of the ETH Zurich), Marc Chardonnens (Director of the Federal Office for the Environment). (Foto AG)

AoS Version 4

The new Atlas of Switzerland AoS is (since 2000) already version 4.

“The AoS is mandated by law by the Swiss Federation to visualize themes from different fields such as socio-economy, ecology, history and energy, etc. in an ongoing long-term project. Since its beginning in 1961, the aim of this Swiss national atlas is to offer cartographically sound maps in combination with additional information to the general public in order to visualize visible and hidden structures and processes.” (Source: Atlas of Switzerland goes online and 3D – Concept, Architecture and Visualization. Methods. René Sieber, Marianna Serebryakova, Raimund Schnürer, Lorenz Hurni. EuroCarto 2015)

Version 4 is a step forward. It
– is based on a platform open for third parties’ products,
– is available online and
– presents information on a globe model and in 3D.

Platform

The AtlasPlatformSwitzerland (APS) is the architectural framework for future AoS products. It also offers the possibility to publish affiliated atlases from other institutions; one example is the Hydrological Atlas of the University of Bern.

Online

After downloading the client software (for te moment Windows only), thematic maps can be selected from the online archive and viewed.
Besides the navigation in the Atlas itself an easy access to these maps is also given on AoS’ Website:

Presentation

And here comes the fascinating part of the new Atlas: The presentation based on an earth model and also in 3D.

“The core of this APS – the so-called APSglobe – consists of a 3D virtual globe (osgEarth) with basic tools for navigation, visualization, and querying.” (http://www.atlasderschweiz.ch/portfolio/).

A globalized example shows the flights from Zurich in 3D:

 

Another map presents population density in two and three-dimensional views:

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Drilldowns show settlement structures  (here the train station Bern) with the possibility of navigating through cities and of changing perspectives:

Hydrological Atlas

On the same Atlas Platform, the University of Bern publishes its Hydrological Atlas of Switzerland using all the possibilities of navigating and presentation.

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More maps: Statistical Atlas of Switzerland

There’s another Atlas with hundreds of thematic maps based on statistics:

More about Statatlas in the –> Leporello

 

 

Open Data: Global Goals, Local Impact

Upcoming Open Data Event

IODC16 Madrid. Global goals, local impact

The 4th International Open Data Conference, IODC16 will take place in Madrid. October 6-7, 2016. It will be ‘designed not as a single statement on open data, but rather as a curated record of discussions and debates, providing a snapshot of key issues and setting out a path forward based on the visions, ideas, and agreements explored at IODC 2015′ in Canada.

Reporting IODC 2015

From the 2015 report:

‘More than 1000 participants from 56 different countries took part in the 3rd International Open Data Conference (IODC) in Ottawa from May 28-29, 2015 . Hosted by the Government of Canada, the International Development Research Centre, and the World Bank, IODC brought together open data experts to understand the global impact of open data, coordinate action, and share best practices.’ p.5

‘A few years ago, debates about open data centered on dataset formats and data portals—not any more . Today, the open data debate covers an increasingly broad spectrum of topics: from comprehensive principles for open data and the measurement of impact, to the development of common standards, and critical issues such as privacy, multilingual data communities, and indigenous knowledge.’ p.30

Using Linked Open Data LOD

An example showing how LOD helps break down silos: Florian Bauer’s presentation in IODC 2015 ‘Using Open Data Thesauri to Connect Climate Platforms’.

‘Data + Environment = Mobilizing Knowledge
Addressing climate change and environmental sus-
tainability is a knowledge-intensive enterprise . With
billions of data points from scientific research and mil-
lions of journal articles published in many different
languages over recent decades, organizing all that in-
formation, and getting it to the right people at the right
time requires both active intermediaries and shared
knowledge infrastructures . The Climate Knowledge
Brokers (CKB) group is building on the Renewable En-
ergy and Energy Efficiency Partnership’s (REEEP) mul-
tilingual climate thesaurus to tag and enrich content
from different document repositories, using a shared
Linked Open Data taxonomy . This helps to break down
the silos that keep information apart, building a stron-
ger open data ecosystem.’

Open Data Standards. LOD?!

‘In collaboration with Iniciativa Latinoamericana por los Datos Abiertos (ILDA), Open North interviewed governments and civil society organizations in 10 low- and middle-income countries to get a sense of their progress, challenges, needs and interests with respect to open data standards. After reviewing the previously identified gaps in standardization in light of the interview results, we proposed 32 draft recommendations, which we now invite stakeholders to discuss, comment on, and eventually implement.’ (Guest post on the Blog IODC 2016 from James McKinney of Open North).

The bad news for LOD is: It’s only nice to have in these countries. The good news is: LOD is on the radar even in countries with not so many resources. The five-star step in the WEB needs time.

On page 40/41 the report ‘Identifying recommended standards and best practices for open data’ (By Stéphane Guidoin (Open North), Paulina Marczak (Open North), Juan Pane (ILDA) and James McKinney (Open North).) gives the following recommendation.

‘Implementation
● When  possible,  government  could  provide  data  using  linked  data  format  like  RDF  or JSON­LD
● Data  tools  should  support  existing  ontologies  and  vocabularies  and  adopt  the relevant ones when possible
Discussion
On one  hand,  linked  data  and use of existing vocabularies is  perceived a significant  aspect  of open  data.  With linked  data,  it is possible  to  significantly  increase  the  automation  capabilities since data attributes become much less ambiguous.
On  the  other  hand,  linked  data  almost  did  not  appear  in  the  answers of  either government  or consumer  interviewees,  and  most  of  the  government  agencies  appeared  to  already  have difficulties  to  comply  with  more  simple  simple  recommendations.  Finally  linked  data  is  more difficult  to  use  and  require  more  advanced  tools  to  be  used  that  average  citizens,  CSOs  and even developer do not always know.
As  a consequence, use of linked data is presented as a “nice to have” recommendation and can be added to, but should not replace more accessible formats like tabular data.’

 

Today – Statsday

October 20th is the day of Official Statistics. It’s the day to highlight the importance of reliable, independent and high-quality numbers. Numbers that help to make good, evidence-based decisions.

This year “Better data, better lives” is the theme of the World Statistics Day selected by the United Nations General Assembly.

https://worldstatisticsday.org/

Many countries also celebrate this day and are planning special events. The new  UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be the focus of most of these events.

500

 Blogstats celebrates a jubilee

• This blog posts since May 2006.

• In the nine years, we published 500 posts and got 206 000 views.

• Every week a blogstats post !

 

My World: The new development agenda

The new development agenda of UN

To know people’s priorities and views for a better life is the aim of the global survey lead actually by the UN.

The results will help defining the next development agenda for the world after the Millenium Development Goals MDG.

 

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Results of My World Survey by April 2014

http://data.myworld2015.org/

All about

Here you can fnd more about the background of the post-2015 global development agenda

 

For Everyone

The World Wide Web’s birthday! (webat25.org). And a greeting address from Tim Bernetrs-Lee:

‘By working together, I believe we can build a Web that truly is for everyone: one that is accessible to all, from any device, and one that empowers all of us to achieve our dignity, rights and potential as humans. Let’s use this landmark birthday as a crucial step on that path.’ (T. B-L)

World Wide! World Wide?

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‘ the actions of some companies and some governments threaten our fundamental freedoms on the Web.’ https://webwewant.org

A segmented WWW is no longer a WWW.

 

Some events in WWW’s curriculum

To celebrate the 25th year of the Web, Magnus Peter Langeland in the opera blog has assembled 25 facts he thinks to be of interest:

1989: Tim Berners-Lee and the team at CERN invented the World Wide Web.

1990: The Archie Search Engine was created at McGill University. It is considered to be the first internet search engine.

1991: The first ever website went live.

1992: The phrase surfing the internet was coined by Jean Armour Polly.

1993: The Mosaic web browser, often described as the first graphical web browser, was launched.

1994: Yahoo! was launched. It first came out as a web directory.

1995: Opera was born! We turned 18 years old last year.

1996: Nokia released its first phone with internet access, the Nokia 9000 Communicator.

1997: BabelFish, the first automatic-translation application, was launched.

1998: The Google search engine was born.

1999: Napster was launched, changing the way we find and consume music online.

2000:  By 2000, over 20 million websites were up and running.

2001: The first Wikipedia article was published.

2002: Social-networking site Friendster was launched. Today, Friendster now runs as a social-gaming site.

2003: Skype, a voice and video-calling service, was released.

2004: Facebook went online.

2005: The first ever video on YouTube was uploaded. It has a guy and a zoo in it.

2006: Twttr was launched. It’s now called Twitter today and is one of the most used social media services.

2007: Apple released the iPhone, changing the way people use mobile browsers.

2008: Dropbox was launched at TechCrunch50.

2009: WhatsApp, a cross-platform mobile messaging app, was launched.

2010: Instagram was launched. Now, we could finally take pictures of our food.

2011: Google+ was released. It was first launched as an invite-only service.

2012: More than 115,000 websites participated in the largest online protest in history. It was aprotest against internet censorship bills SOPA and PIPA.

2013: Internet.org, a project by Facebook in partnership with Opera and other technology companies, was announced. Its aim is to connect the next 5 billion people online.

2014: The year has just begun! What do you think is the most important event so far?

Date posted: Mar 12, 2014 Author: Magnus Peter Langeland

Big Data Events

The Big Data discussion builds momentum in Official Statistics.

In October 2012 at the UNECE High-level Seminar on Modernization of Statistical Production and Services (HLG) in St.Petersburg Big Data popped up. A strategic paper was asked for.

22 February 2013 the United Nations Statistics Division’s (UNSD) organised the Friday Seminar on Emerging Issues, especially Big Data.

Soon after a very good paper on Big Data was delivered by the HLG.

And in September 2013 the Heads of European Statistical Offices (DGINS Directors General of the National Statistical Institutes) adopted the Scheveningen Memorandum.

Scheveningen Memorandum
Big Data and Official Statistics

‘The DGINS
CONSIDERING
1. Recent innovations in the information and communication technologies have been leading to an increasing degree of digitization of economies and societies at all levels that offer new opportunities for the compilation of statistics.
2. The use of Big Data for statistical purposes challenges the European Statistical System to effectively address a variety of issues.
3. The demand for timely and cost efficient production of high quality statistical data increases, as well the need for new solutions to declining response levels.
4. Official statistics should incorporate as much as possible all potential data sources, including Big Data, into their conceptual design.
5. The distinguishing aspect of many Big Data sources is that they are not confined to national borders and, as such, represent unique opportunities for collaboration at European level as well as on global level.
6. Many European initiatives have a link to Big Data, including the European
Commission’s ambition for developing a strategy for the European data value chain, the on-going EU Data Protection reform and the Horizon2020 program.
7. The implementation of new methods of production of European statistics represents an objective of the European Statistical Programme 2013-2017 (1) and aims at efficiency gains and quality improvements, including increased timeliness.

(1) Regulation (EU) No 99/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 January 2013 on the European statistical programme 2013-17, OJ L 39, 9.2.2013, p. 12–29

The DGINS
1. Acknowledge that Big Data represent new opportunities and challenges for Official Statistics, and therefore encourage the European Statistical System and its partners to effectively examine the potential of Big Data sources in that regard.
2. Recognise that Big Data is a phenomenon which is impacting on many policy areas. It is therefore essential to develop an ‘Official Statistics Big Data strategy‘ and to examine the place and the interdependencies of this strategy within the wider context of an overall government strategy at national as well as at EU level.
3. Recognise that the implications of Big Data for legislation especially with regard to data protection and personal rights (e.g. access to Big Data sources held by third parties) should be properly addressed as a matter of priority in a coordinated manner.
4. Note that several NSIs are currently initiating or considering different uses of Big Data in a national context. There is a momentum to share experiences obtained from concrete Big Data projects and to collaborate within the ESS and beyond, on a global level.
5. Recognise that developing the necessary capabilities and skills to effectively explore Big Data is essential for their integration into the European Statistical System. This requires systematic efforts like appropriate training courses and establishing dedicated communities including academics for sharing experiences and best practice.
6. Acknowledge that the multidisciplinary character of Big Data requires synergies and partnerships to be effectively built with experts and stakeholders from various
domains including government, academics and owners of private data sources.
7. Acknowledge that the use of Big Data in the context of official statistics requires new developments in methodology, quality assessment and IT related issues. The European Statistical System should make a special effort to supports these
developments.
8. Agree on the importance of following up the implementation of this memorandum by adopting an ESS action plan and roadmap by mid-2014 that should be further integrated into the Statistical Annual Work Programmes of Eurostat.’
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ESS Big Data Event Roma 2014

And now comes the ESS Big Data Event from  31 March-1 April 2014. It offers keynotes and seminars dealing with several of the Scheveningen topics. See the programme and the concept paper.
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The European Data Forum (EDF) Athens 2014

Some days before the ESS Event the annual European Data Forum will take place in Athens, March 19-20 2014. Big Data will be a topic there, too.

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A practical example: Using Social media analysis for statistics

During the DGINS meeting 2013 in the Netherlands some examples of Big Data usage for statistical insights were accessible as presentations.
The Dutch Statistical Office CBS and Coosto the social media monitoring and engagement tool dived into the digital ocean of social media data and made some comparisons.

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Big data and official statisics: A conclusion from Els Rijnierse’s  presentation on traffic big data: