This book explores the independence of official statistics and describes the various legal and professional norms, institutional arrangements, instruments and practices that statisticians have developed over recent decades to protect their work from political interference. It argues that this ‘drive for independence’, which saw the replication of these norms, arrangements, and instruments across countries, was largely led by the international epistemic community of statisticians, and it identifies some of the paths and processes that enabled this drive.

This book offers a broad selection of statistical applications to everyday situations, illustrating how exciting and diverse statistical analysis can be. It covers a wide variety of topics, including offering hearing-impaired people the option to enjoy music, extracting meaningful quantitative data from texts, and modeling flood disasters to help get a better grip on them. Most of the examples are not typically found in textbooks but directly relate to real-life problems encountered by the “average person”, including topics relevant for sustainable development.
Technical jargon and...