6 March 2016 - An article on the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog describes how researchers managed to carry out opinion polls on executions in Bahrain, «one of the most difficult countries in the region for such sensitive research». In order to overcome the difficulties encountered, they ran two ‘innovative surveys’ in partnership with research company RIWI.

12 February 2016 - Yesterday, stats guru Jeff Leek confessed the ultimate unpopular opinion in data science: «I don’t use ggplot2 and I get nervous when other people do» (if you haven’t a clue what this is about, you may want to skip this post altogether). His confession met with ridicule, more riducule, and an occasional «oh my god I thought I was the only one!».

1 February 2016 - The Oxford Dictionary has been accused of sexism because it associates rabid with feminism. How does the Guardian use the term?

29 January 2016 - Recently, the minister answered questions from the Finance Committee of the Lower House. One of them questioned the use of a stacked bar chart to show dividends, «since this isn’t very clear».

22 January 2016 - Statistics Netherlands (CBS), the Dutch national statistics office, has always had a solid, if somewhat dull, reputation. The organisation published data, but didn’t do projections and was reluctant to offer interpretations. Meanwhile, it was considered to be among the best statistics offices in the world. But over the past two years, there have been some changes.