The quest for trusted statistics and the impact of digitalisation: An interesting podcast

“Lies, damned lies and statistics.” You might have heard this phrase, popularised by the writer Mark Twain, being used to describe the persuasive power of statistics, but it is also used to attack statistics. Yet everyone relies on data and statistics for making decisions in everyday life, whether at home or at work. Not having data would be like flying blind.

But with so much information out there, how can we trust the numbers we read in the media or in official government sources, or for that matter, from the OECD?

What are official statistics anyway, who produces them and what makes them so reliable? Do we have enough of the right kind of data for meeting today’s health, climate and other pressing challenges?

My OECD Podcast interview with OECD Chief Statistician Paul Schreyer addresses such questions, and highlights the new technologies that have been transforming the world of statistics and data in recent years, and the digital tools professional statisticians are deploying to improve the quality, timeliness and trustworthiness of the data they provide and on which we all depend.

The podcast is also available on Spotify, iTunes and everywhere else.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/78bmEbHPzybXx3zttw1qfj

Paul Schreyer, OECD Chief Statistician and head of the OECD Statistics and Data Directorate, discusses with host, Rory Joseph Clarke