Zoom link https://videoconf-colibri.zoom.us/j/92467888625
Abstract
Good statistics can do a lot of good: They help to base decisions on factual arguments, they can simplify conflict resolution. This requires an understanding of the opportunities and risks, the strengths and limitations of statistical facts. Overestimation leads to exaggerated expectations and disappointments, underestimation to missed opportunities, risks. Even worse is the trouble if facts are influenced or manipulated with political intentions or if even the impression of arbitrariness is created with so-called ‘alternative facts’. The very bad excesses of political misuse of statistics are carried out with intent and not negligently. Nevertheless, it can be argued that the virus of false and manipulated information flourishes when the statistical literacy of the population is at a low level. On the less serious scale of missed opportunities or too high expectations regarding statistics, there are, of course, also observations that suggest that an improvement in statistical literacy would be very good for politics, both on the part of the population and on the part of politics itself. Overall, the aim must be to promote and nurture a culture in which a conscious and experienced approach regarding data and statistics has become the standard.
Short Bio
Walter J. Radermacher was Director General of Eurostat and Chief Statistician of the European Union from 2008 to 2016. He worked at Destatis, the German Federal Statistical Office, for 30 years, ultimately as its President. He was the first Chair of the UN Committee of Experts on Environmental-Economic Accounting (UNCEEA) from 2005 to 2008 and a member of OECD’s High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress from 2013 to 2018. Since 2023 he is the Vicepresident of FENStatS, the Federation of European National Statistical Societies, after having been its president since 2017. Since 2022 he is Chair of the ISI Advisory Board on Ethics and (honorary) Professor at the Statistical Institute of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. Walter Radermacher is Honorary Fellow 2023 of the Royal Statistical Society.
Book: Radermacher, Walter J. 2020. Official Statistics 4.0 – Verified Facts for People in the 21st Century (Springer Nature, Heidelberg) https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783030314910
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