Statistical literacy

"Statistical thinking will one day be as necessary for efficient citizenship as the ability to read and write."
Samuel S. Wilks (1906-64) paraphrasing H. G. Wells (1866-1946)

A SLASA professional development event this evening presented by Pam from the Australian Bureau of Statistics was a great idea. Sure we could have stayed at home and spent a couple of hours exploring the ABS website ourselves, but participants agreed that hearing it from someone who lives and breathes the service can enthuse and inform.

Things I learned:

• Statistical literacy is a key driver. ABS is consulting on defining this concept and describing statistical competencies.
• The ABS is moving from model of data dissemination to data communication.
  
• Looking for an overview of statistics available about education?
  Education and Training Statistics National Centre
• It's all OPEN and FREE - unless you need a complex dataset that takes the  helpdesk longer than 5 minutes to produce
• Data visualisation features like the animated population pyramid require downloadable SVG viewer
• The 2009 Australian Year Book will not be published in hard copy due to budget cuts. You can email the ABS to register an opinion about this.
• Census@School 2008 data collection finishes on 4 July. Check out the sample questionnaire
  
• CPI is the single most requested figure
• At the time of typing this, the Australian Population clock stood at
  21,329,123

The ABS site produces ridiculously long urls - thank goodness for the edna url shortening service: http://url.edna.edu.au 

Look for interface changes from 4 July 2008, and a labs area called Beta works.

Tags: statistics resources digital literacies multiliteracies
Posted at 11:43PM Jun 16, 2008 by Pru Mitchell  |  Comments[0]