Tagged: Data

Open data, transparency and power – role of the Virtual Health Information Network - Public Health Expert

Public Health Expert • Jun 14, 2017 •

• Big Data,
• Data,
• health data,
• IDI,
• Integrated Data Infrastructure,
• privacy,
• public health,
• VHIN,
• Virtual Health Information Network

Dr Andrea Teng, Dr Barry Milne, Mr Philip Walker, Prof Tony Blakely The NZ Government is showing strong leadership on data sharing. In this blog we describe some of the opportunities and the challenges in this new data environment. We focus on how the Virtual Health Information Network (VHIN) can contribute to stronger health research and therefore benefit the health … Read More

What (e/im)migration data to use when - The Dismal Science

Michael Reddell • May 02, 2017 •

• Data,
• emigration,
• immigration,
• MBIE,
• Statistic New Zealand,
• statistics,
• visas

I was having a conversation with someone the other day, trying to explain both what data there were on movements of people into (and out of) New Zealand, and which data was useful for what purpose.  Reflecting on that afterwards, it seemed that a post might be useful.  This follows on from my post last week on the Herald’s misleading … Read More

Hypothesis testing: open data edition - The Dismal Science

Eric Crampton • Apr 18, 2017 •

• Data,
• GSS,
• happiness,
• nerds,
• open data,
• wellbeing

Credit: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. The graph looked plausible. It didn’t really fit my experience, but it didn’t seem implausible either. So I took a 5 minute jaunt over to Berkeley’s SDA engine, which draws on US GSS data. First I ran a basic regression of happiness on age, age squared, with a high score in wordsum (a vocabulary … Read More

Fluoridation: Making sense of the Ministry of Health data - Open Parachute

Ken Perrott • Mar 28, 2017 •

• Data,
• dental health,
• fluoridation,
• fluoride,
• Ministry of Health

Every year local anti-fluoride activists eagerly await release of the latest Ministry of Health (MoH) data on the oral health of New Zealand School children. These data are a mine of examples which can be cherry-picked to argue that community water fluoridation is ineffective – or even that the oral health of children in non-fluoridated areas is better than fluoridated … Read More

Govt requests NGO client data – Why do they need this? - The Dismal Science

Eric Crampton • Mar 04, 2017 •

• benchmarking,
• Data,
• government,
• Integrated Data Infrastructure,
• privacy,
• social development

I’m a big fan of letting NGOs benchmark their effectiveness using government data. But I don’t quite get why the government needs NGOs to collect some of this information on their behalf. Here goes. The government holds a huge amount of linked administrative data on all of us in the Integrated Data Infrastructure. All kinds of stuff can be linked … Read More

Non-fluoridated Christchurch does not have better teeth than fluoridated Auckland - Open Parachute

Ken Perrott • Feb 07, 2017 •

• Cherry Picking,
• community water fluoridation,
• Data,
• ethnicity,
• fluoridation,
• Health and Medicine,
• Science,
• Science and Society

It seems every time anti-fluoride propagandists present data it is either cherry-picked, distorted or misleading. Often all three. So it is hardly a surprise to find local anti-fluoride propagandists are telling porkies again. They have been promoting this graphic claiming it shows people in “non-fluoridated Christchurch have “better teeth.” But the graphic is based on naive cherry-picking of the data, it ignores the effect different ethnic … Read More

Lies! Damned lies and statistics: why reporters must handle data with care - Guest Work

Guest Work • Nov 29, 2016 •

• Brexit,
• Data,
• economics,
• EU,
• media,
• politics,
• reporting,
• statistics

By Stephen Cushion, Cardiff University and Justin Lewis, Cardiff University During the 2016 EU referendum campaign, both sides used statistics pretty freely to back their arguments. Understandably, UK broadcasters felt compelled to balance competing perspectives, giving audiences the opportunity to hear the relative merits of leaving or remaining in the EU. In doing so, however, the truth … Read More

Is Big Data threatening bureaucracies? - The Dismal Science

Eric Crampton • Oct 20, 2016 •

• Big Data,
• Data,
• government,
• Integrated Data Infrastructure

AUT’s Rhema Vaithianathan sees the potential for big data in the public service. The age of Big Data has come to consumers rapidly, reinventing how we shop, socialise, bank and get from A to B. And a Big Data revolution is slowly rolling through the public sector too. If we do this right, in 20 years or so the … Read More

Climate change: Biologists told to ‘pull on their boots’ and collect data - News

John Kerr • Sep 11, 2016 •

• biologists,
• climate change,
• Data,
• ecology,
• species

An international team of 22 biologists have called on their colleagues to get cracking and collect certain types of data to help predict how the planet’s estimated 8.7 million species will handle a warmer future. “Our biggest challenge is pinpointing which species to concentrate on and which regions we need to allocate resources,” says Associate Professor Mark Urban from the University of Connecticut, lead author … Read More

Does open source equal open society? - Stick

Peter Kerr • Aug 08, 2016 •

• business,
• Data,
• open society,
• open source,
• OS//OS,
• technology

Every party needs a grumpy uncle…so let me be that curmudgeonly guy for the upcoming Open Source//Open Society conference. (Early spoiler alert – I’m going to some of OS//OS. There’s too many thought provoking speakers, too much opportunity to touch base with clever people not to) The second such OS//OS event is talking (was originally a typo, but it … Read More