Are you looking for a way to celebrate World Statistics Day? I know you are. And I can’t think of a better way than supporting the African Data Initiative (ADI).
I’m proud to have met some of the statisticians, statisticis educators and researchers who are leading this initative at an International Association of Statistics Educators Roundtable workshop in Cebu, The Phillipines, in 2012. You can read about Roger and David’s Stern’s projects in Kenya here in the journal Technology Innovations in Statistics Education. This group – represented at the workshop by father-and-son Roger and David, and at-the-time grad students Zacharaiah Mbasu and James Musyoka – impressed me with their determination to improve international statistical literacy and with their successful and creative pragmatic implementations to adjust to the needs of the local situations in Kenya.
The ADI is seeking funds within the next 18 days to adapt two existing software packages, R and Instat+ so that there is a free, open-source, easy-to-learn statistical software package available and accessible throughout the world. While R is free and open-sourced, it is not easy to learn (particularly in areas where English literacy is low). Instat+ is, they claim, easy to learn but not open-source (and also does not run on Linux or Mac).
One of the exciting things about this project is that these solutions to statistical literacy are being developed by Africans working and researching in Africa, and are not ‘imported’ by groups or corporations with little experience implementing in the local schools. One lesson I’ve learned from my experience working with the Los Angeles Unified School District is that you must work closely with the schools for which you are developing curricula; outsider efforts have a lower chance of success. I hope you’ll take a moment –in the next 18 days–to become acquainted with this worthy project!
World Statistics Day is October 20. The theme is Better Data. Better Lives.
