Hans Rosling on BBC2

For those readers in the UK (or within the area that can be reached by BBC transmitters), a new programme featuring the guru of statisticians Professor Hans Rosling is shown tonight.

It's called 'Don't Panic: the truth about Population' - here's a snippet on YouTube



And take the Guardian's Population Quiz, with 9 questions set by Hans....

Cesky Krumlov - the next project meeting

Project partners are preparing to meet once again for updates on the project.

There will be planning of the teacher training course and associated materials which will be used at the end of the project.
There are also ongoing efforts to translate the website, and other materials into the languages used by the project partners, which will increase the reach of the materials into a range of educational establishments.

Cesky Krumlov is in the Czech Republic, and parts of it are a World Heritage site...

Sadly, Alan Parkinson will not be able to attend the meeting due to his new teaching commitments, but plans are well advanced for a productive meeting.

Image: courtesy of Flickr user LostBob Photos and shared under Creative Commons license.
Many thanks

Averages

I enjoyed reading this Seth Godin piece on averages

Of course if a statistician puts one hand in flames and another in the fridge then on average they're nice and warm....

Urban World App - urban statistics and analysis

"Understanding cities and their shifting demographics is critical to reaching urban consumers and to preparing for the challenges that will arise from increasing demand for natural resources (such as water and energy) and for capital to invest in new housing, office buildings, and port capacity."



Cities are of vital importance to the future world.

This new iPad app from the McKinsey Global Institute provides a detailed analysis of cities around the world.
Read about it HERE.

Personal Statistics

We' re all statistics from the moment we're born.
We add one to the population of the world...

Here's Danny Dorling exploring life expectancy....

VITAL Teachshare session

On the 29th of January, I ran a VITAL Teachshare session on numeracy in geography, where I introduced people to the I-USE project.
The session was called 'You can count on Geography', and included a number of ideas for working with numbers / statistics and databases in geography.
I'm grateful to those who came along to the session...
The presentation I used is here:

Vital numeracy from GeoBlogs

If you have any questions having watched the presentation, please get in touch.

EuroGeo13 - I-USE Session

The final day of the EuroGeo conference involved a session for the I-USE project.

The 3rd day of EUROGEO started with the 5th session, which meant that we were involved.

It was a damp day in Bruges, and we wandered over wet cobbles as the town came to life again, and generally got damp on the way. There was an introductory session for the I-USE project. Karsten Duus, from Denmark led the session on our behalf, with input from all the partners.

Our website http://www.i-use.eu  has been launched now, and although there is not a large amount of information at present - the site will grow through the life of the project.

We talked through the introduction to the project, the development of the website, and our plans over the life of the project.

There was an existing website, called WORLDSTAT which started it all off...
The project develops that forward, with a range of tools and other elements, some of which I shall be writing.

One of the people who came to the presentation was involved in the Dutch EduGIS website. This is well worth a look too.

We have a new FACEBOOK group, which you are welcome to join.
There's also a TWITTER feed to follow

Get in touch through the comments if you'd like to find out more or have specific questions...