It’s all stats to me!?
I don't want to seem too harsh on statisticians - afterall some might consider me one. Most of us are lovely and hardworking people producing important data like Actual New Capital Expenditure in volume terms or International Trade Price Indexes or putting out research papers on Small Area Estimation Using a Multinomial Logit Mixed Model with Category Specific Random Effects. While I may not know what multinomial logit is (and aren't that keen to find out either), I'm sure that it goes a long way towards helping us produce better statistics at the ABS. And I sincerely mean that!
Just like these research papers, the aim of the MAP consultation (and this blog) is to help the ABS to produce better statistics to measure Australia's progress. We're asking people about what is important to them so we can better measure our progress on the areas of life that they think should be included in the overall picture of Australia's progress. Luckily (at least for me) you don't need to know all the ins and outs of new capital expenditure, to be able to tell the ABS what matters to you.
So tell us what's matters to you for Australia's progress.
Just so you know, I never studied maths or statistics at uni...... so technically I'm not really a statistician :)
Serhat (MAP team)
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10/09/2011 01:04:47 It’s all stats to me!?
Just a suggestion: all of the abs posts I'ce seen are brief enough to run in their entirety on the RSS feeds--no need to cut them off after one or two lines.
And...you need to see how your pages look and function on the iPad. (hint: not good).
Otherwise, your content is excellent.
12/09/2011 10:12:21 It’s all stats to me!?
Hi Godfree
Thanks for the positive comment. Unfortunately, we're limited by the software we use, so the RSS feed cuts off automatically. But for the next time the ABS runs a blog, we'll make a note of it. And with regard to the iPad, not sure why it would be doing that but we'll look into it.
13/09/2011 01:10:43 It’s all stats to me!?
I have a question about reading the older posts on the blog.
I see that you can use the search function to find and read previous posts that have scrolled off the bottom of the main page and it is also possible to use a RSS reader to see a list of older posts and then use those links to read them, but is there no other easier way to browse through the older posts that are no longer on the front page?
13/09/2011 12:18:40 It’s all stats to me!?
Hi Kevin
Thanks for the question. We put an archive for the previous posts so hopefully that will make it easier to find the older posts.
19/09/2011 22:21:14 It’s all stats to me!?
Just a short suggestion. I'm a bank analyst, and I find the ABS one of the more difficult sources to get data from. Don't get me wrong, there is a wealth of data, but I've often found myself searching for longer than I would on almost any other data source (note: Bloomberg's interface is very ugly, and the data of questionable quality, but its very easy to use).
In terms of measuring Australia's progress, it seems like something like a scorecard wouldn't be a bad idea.
At the moment, the Australian voter seems to handle metrics like unemployment, inflation and economic growth satisfactorily. The RBA gets graded on inflation, the government of the day mostly on unemployment and economic growth.
Other measures might belong on the scorecard too. Things like measures of satisfaction with leisure time, estimates of the viability of superannuation as a retirement funding vehicle, life expectancy, labour market turnover rates (its one thing to lose a job, its another to find one), measures of economic opportunities within Australia (I'll be honest, I'd love to measure it but I have no idea how), education levels, median hours of sleep per day, perceptions of safety, accuracy of media outlets, measures of local supply versus local demand of childcare.
Kind regards,
JT
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