Branko Milanovic asked on Twitter: Idea for a paper: “Homogamy” on Twitter. Do people with more followers follow people with more followers? I don’t have time to write a paper but I was sufficiently interested to want to blog about it. The consensus in the replies was “of course ... [Read more...]

I last blogged about books in September 2016 and it’s still in my 10 most popular posts. I thought I’d update it with some of the data-relevant books I read in 2017. Mostly these are books that were published before 2017 - it’s just that it was last year that I ... [Read more...]

I last blogged about books in September 2016 and it’s still in my 10 most popular posts. I thought I’d update it with some of the data-relevant books I read in 2017. Mostly these are books that were published before 2017 - it’s just that it was last year that I ... [Read more...]

Official statistical classifications can be big, complex things. For example, the complete version of the “International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities, Rev.4” comes as either a 300 page PDF or a 1.3GB Microsoft Acce... [Read more...]

Official statistical classifications can be big, complex things. For example, the complete version of the “International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities, Rev.4” comes as either a 300 page PDF or a 1.3GB Microsoft Access database. Classifications typically have a hierarchy of four or more levels and hundreds or thousands ... [Read more...]

A puzzle In my last blog post, I gave a hypothetical test exercise for candidates in a recruitment process, involving the International Visitor Survey (IVS) from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). I once managed the team resp... [Read more...]

A puzzle In my last blog post, I gave a hypothetical test exercise for candidates in a recruitment process, involving the International Visitor Survey (IVS) from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). I once managed the team responsible for that survey and other sector data, so I was ... [Read more...]

A management challenge Between 2011 and 2017 I selected somewhere between 20 and 30 staff and contractors, for New Zealand public sector roles with titles like Analyst, Senior Analyst and Principal Analyst. Alternative names for these roles could h... [Read more...]

A management challenge Between 2011 and 2017 I selected somewhere between 20 and 30 staff and contractors, for New Zealand public sector roles with titles like Analyst, Senior Analyst and Principal Analyst. Alternative names for these roles could have been (and sometimes were) “researcher”, “data analyst”, “statistician”, “R developer”, “data scientist” and in one ... [Read more...]