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Statistics have played an important role both in our understanding of the coronavirus pandemic, and our attempts to fight it. The RSS sets out ten lessons the government can learn, and a series of recommendations for what they should do now, to ensure that the country's data infrastructure is prepared for the next crisis - whatever form it takes.

Long read from the New Yorker on employment statistics. Good economic statistics benefit the left and the right, government and business. Without reliable data, businesses can't take risks on investments. Boeing, for example, decides how many 787 Dreamliners to build and therefore how many people to employ based on its Current Market Outlook forecast, which is rooted in government data and projects aircraft demand for the next twenty years.

Mona Chalabi on the perils of polling data and the importance of official statistics

There is a black hole in our knowledge of women and girls around the world. They are often missing from official statistics, and areas of their lives are ignored completely. So campaigners say - but what needs to be done?

examples of data journalism in audio / podcast form - including: Right To Remain Silent is one particularly good example, because it's about bad data: specifically. police who manipulated official statistics. You might also listen to Choosing Wrong, which includes a section about polling. Another favourite of mine is an audio story by The Economist about the prostitution industry, based on data scraped from sex trade websites: More bang for your buck (there are even worse puns in the charts). David Rhodes, a BBC data journalist, has a range of stories on his Audioboom account, including pieces on Radio 4, Radio 5 Live, and a piece discussing "Did Greece really not pay 89.5% of their taxes in 2010" from the excellent factchecking radio programme, More or Less.

Since the census is the ultimate measure of population in the U.S., one might wonder how we could even know if its count was off. In other words, who recounts the count? Well, the Census Bureau itself, but using a different data source. After each modern census, the bureau carries out research to gauge the accuracy of the most recent count and to improve the survey for the next time around. The best method for determining the scope of the undercount is refreshingly simple: The bureau compares the total number of recorded births and deaths for people of each birth year, then adds in an estimate of net international migration and … that's it. With that number, the bureau can vet the census - which missed 4.6 percent of kids under 5 in 2010, according to this check.

Very cool visualisation, showing the power of thinking in manageable numbers. If Australia were just 100 people, what would it look like? New census data gives us an opportunity to find out, and provides some surprising insights into the state of the nation.

Data analysis is playing an increasing role in the U.S. electoral system, raising an important question as the Trump administration prepares to oversee the 2020 Census: What if the data aren't reliable?

the BBC has uncovered a sombre data gap that may be having a profound effect on good governance for some countries in Africa. Only eight out of more than 50 African countries investigated by the BBC have a compulsory system to register deaths, meaning many lack a complete view of mortality trends. This could be having a far-reaching influence on a number of key policy areas - including resource allocation and understanding the impact of Covid-19.