Universal Library   Statistical Data searching

by fravia+
First published at http://www.searchlores.org: December 2007    
Updated: March 2008
(supersedes the obsolete specdba.htm#stattt section)

Introduction
Statistical data
Minimal Statistical Bibliography


Introduction
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics" (Disraeli)
Top


Simplify numbers and statistics, and they will become a tag clearer.
Bias in sampling require that you use your own sense of proportion everytime you are confronted with statistical data. Relate those "numbers" to yourself and your country, in order to value them correctly.
Also remember that data collections are prone to misbehave, because of human answers (typical and very frequent birthday when people are in a hurry filling some form: 11.11.1911, since 00/00/0000 will not be accepted).


There is a wealth of information on the web, as this statistical data searching section testifies. I have gathered here only a broad 'palette' of tools, readers that have found/will find better tools are kindly requested to deliver their own pointers.



Statistical data
Top

United Nations STATISTICS     United Nations UNDP     IMF     Eurostat
gapminder     sourceoecd




United Nations STATISTICS service     and DATA section

Statistical Databases, for instance: United Nations Common Database (UNCDB)




United Nations UNDP (Development) World Data... (the third worldians utopists)

Human Development Reports

A glimps into the data, for instance inequality: http://hdrstats.undp.org/indicators/146.html. Starting from this page, and clicking on any single country, you can move around the database at will.


List of "indicators": http://hdrstats.undp.org/indicators/l. Starting from this page, and clicking on any single country, you can move around the database at will.




IMF - WORLD ECONOMIC AND FINANCIAL SURVEYS... (the masters of the commercial planetscape)

IMF Data and Statitiscs

The World Economic Outlook (WEO) Database April 2001 This is the string: http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2001/01/data/, just change "2001" to a later year to get there.
The World Economic Outlook (WEO) Database April 2002
The World Economic Outlook (WEO) Database April 2003
...
The World Economic Outlook (WEO) Database April 2006

You can also search the current data either by Country (group), or by Aggregates, and let the script prepare you a report on the fly.


EUROSTAT... (the faceless honest bureaucrats)

Eurostat silly oracle Portal (crap entrance)

For instance: Euro indicators

Eurostat PDF files and data access




Gapminder... Well, you'r in for a lot of professor Hans Roslings's talks.
Quite useful stats anyway: Gapminder is a swedish non-profit venture promoting sustainable global development and achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals by increased use and understanding of statistics and other information about social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels.
Needs a lot of adobe's crap flash.

Gapminder's PDF world charts




Sourceoecd... ORGANISATION FOR ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION AND DEVELOPMENT.

OECD stats
OECD stats (2)
Statistical Databases
OECD Index of Statistical Variables





Minimal Statistical Bibliography
To know what statistics are worth, you need to know how they are gathered
Top


All these books are very easy to find on the web, especially once you have their titles and Authors.
Guess they have been already given to the public domain. If not, and if still patented, you should always "buy" such stuff, instead of simply downloading from somewhere for free.

-rw-r--r-- 1 father father 8147625 2007-09-12 12:45 How To Lie With Statistics_Darrell_Huff_1954.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 father father 1348372 2007-08-07 17:59 Paulos,John_Allen_1990_Innumeracy-_Mathematical_Illiteracy_and_its_consequences.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 father father 1007216 2007-08-12 03:23 Damned Lies and Statistics_Joel_Best_2001.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 father father 3562735 2006-08-07 12:55 Statistics For Dummies_2003.chm
drwxr-xr-x 2 father father    8192 2006-07-03 19:25 Joel_Best_2004_More Damned Lies and Statistics
-rw-r--r-- 1 father father 5069629 2007-12-21 11:16 Working_with_Numbers_and_Statistics_2005.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 father father 1820339 2007-12-21 11:01 Wiley.Common.Errors.in.Statistics.Second.Edition.ebook_2006.pdf




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