Hans Rosling’s concern has always been to help people understand the world with numbers, to take away their fear of numbers. And thanks to comprehensibly presented data, he wanted to convey insights that could lead to actions improving the world. In this spirit, the –> Project Rosling led by the Swiss Confederation and its partners was created. This project has now become the Unlocking the Power of Data Initiative . Those responsible give the following reasons for the name change: ‘This current initiative was originally called “Project Rosling”. Due to some misunderstandings on who is behi ..read more

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 ..read more

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 ..read more

The end for the traditional statistical yearbooks – be they printed or as ebooks – is approaching gradually. The German yearbook has recently been hit. The last edition had its farewell at a press conference on 30 October 2019: “Digitisation is shaping the statistics of the 21st century. The expansion of our digital communication is necessary if we want to remain the leading provider of statistical information about Germany. We say goodbye to the Statistical Yearbook, which stood for our activities for almost seven decades. The yearbook goes, but the data remains. They are already availabl ..read more

Official statistics have never been exempt from the changes taking place around them. Numerous organisations at national and international level are constantly dealing with it and it is always interesting to see what the current 2019 assessment of future challenges is. One example Here is an example: Kurt Vandenberghe from the EU Commission (Directorate A) in his closing speech at the conference on New Techniques and Technologies for Official Statistics (NTTS 2019). He focuses on data collection – especially smart data – , necessary qualifications and possible support from AI. Dis ..read more

In large amounts of data, information is hidden that can hardly be recognized with simple means. Special methods for data analysis are in demand and visualization techniques in particular help to overview the information gained and to pass it on in an understandable way. Media have recognised the potential of statistical and other data years ago; this has led to what has been practised as data journalism in various large newspapers and also in newspaper co-operations. The Datablog A pioneer is The Guardian, whose datablog celebrated its 10th anniversary in March 2019: The Guardian ..read more