1. Relevant parameters for highlighting in the article/report
Writing Statistics:
Relevant parameters for highlighting in the article/report
CONTRACTOR IS ACTING UNDER A FRAMEWORK CONTRACT CONCLUDED WITH THE COMMISSION
Iraj Namdarian
Luxumbourg – 27/11/2014

2. Relevant parameters for highlighting in the article/report:
Session overview
Relevant parameters for highlighting in the article/report:
1 Principles of Media Objectivity 2 Making Data Meaningful (writing stories about numbers) 3 Visual elements 4 Review and discussion about some international Official Statistics

3. Media Objectivity: People's right to true information
Dedication to objective reality
Social responsibility
Professional integrity
Public access and participation
People and individuals have the right to acquire an objective picture of reality by means of accurate and comprehensive information as well as to express themselves freely through the various media of culture and communication.
The public is provided with adequate material to facilitate the formation of an accurate and comprehensive picture of the world in which the origin, nature and essence of events, processes and state of affairs are understood as objectively as possible.
Information in journalism is understood as a social good and not as a commodity.
The transmitted information is accountable not only to those controlling the media but ultimately to the public at large, including various social interests.
The integrity of the profession does not permit the acceptance of any form of bribe or the promotion of any private interest contrary to the general welfare.
Promotion of the access by the public to information and participation of the public in the media, including the right of correction or rectification and the right of reply.

4. Media Objectivity: Respect for privacy and human dignity
Respect for public interest
Respect for universal values and diversity of cultures
Principles of freedom in the honest collection and publication of news, and of the right of fair comment and criticism
Respect for truth and for the right of the public to truth
Respect for the right of the individual to privacy and human dignity, in conformity with provisions of international and national law concerning protection of the rights and the reputation of others, prohibiting libel, calumny, slander and defamation.
Due respect for the national community, its democratic institutions and public morals.
Standing for the universal values of humanism, above all peace, democracy, human rights, social progress and national liberation, while respecting the distinctive character, value and dignity of each culture, as well as the right of each people freely to choose and develop its political, social, economic and cultural systems.

5. “If it is not right do not do it;
if it is not true do not say it.” 
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

6. Making Data Meaningful

8. Making Data Meaningful:
How to write a statistical story
Statistical offices have an obligation to make the data they collect useful to the public.
Stories get people interested in statistical information and help them to understand what the information means in their lives.

9. 2.2 Making Data Meaningful:
How to write a statistical story
After they read good statistical stories, people should feel wiser and informed, not confused.

10. Making Data Meaningful:
How to write a statistical story
A statistical story must be based on sufficient knowledge of the data and the phenomenon under study.

11. Making Data Meaningful:
How to write a statistical story
When preparing a statistical story, you must also remember the European Statistics Code of Practice: (

12. Making Data Meaningful:
How to write a statistical story
Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics:
Impartiality;
Professionalism;
Metadata;

13. Making Data Meaningful:
How to write a statistical story
Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics:
Comment on erroneous interpretation;
Diverse sources;
Confidentiality;
Transparency;

14. Making Data Meaningful:
How to write a statistical story
Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics:
National coordination;
International standards;
International cooperation.

15. Making Data Meaningful:
Possible topics/themes for stories: • Current interest (policy agenda, media coverage, etc.) • Reference to everyday life (food prices, health, etc.)

16. Making Data Meaningful:
Possible topics/themes for stories: • Reference to a particular group (teens, women, the elderly, etc.) • Personal experiences (transportation, education, etc.)

17. Making Data Meaningful:
Possible topics/themes for stories: • Holidays (Labour Day, Christmas, etc.) • Current events (statistics on a topic frequently in the news)

18. Making Data Meaningful:
Possible topics/themes for stories: • A regular series (“This is the way we live now”, “Spotlight on xxxx”, etc.) • Calendar themes (spring, summer, etc.) • New findings

19. Making Data Meaningful:
Write like a journalist - The “inverted pyramid”:
The Inverted Pyramid style, also known as ‘front-loading,‘ involved including all of the most important details which you hope to introduce over the course of the article in the first paragraph. This technique is particularly important for web-writing, where audiences have low attention spans and readers more often scan, rather than read, entire articles. Online writers use this technique for two important reasons: Firstly, so readers quickly decide whether or not to read the article and if they do decide to pass on it, they get all the key details. And secondly, having the best information and keywords close to the start of the page is good for Search Engine Optimization and for the reader.
What is the Inverted Pyramid? In journalism, this method of starting with your conclusion is called the Inverted Pyramid style.  Sometimes referred to as Front-Loading, it means you should put your most important information first when writing for the web.
This style is called an ‘inverted’ pyramid simply because it is an upside-down pyramid with the most important information at the top.
This style of web writing or news story writing has many benefits:
Readers can quickly assess whether they want to read your entire article.
Readers can stop reading at any point and still come away with the main point of your article.
By starting with your conclusion, the first few sentences on your web page will contain most of your relevant keywords.
By front-loading each paragraph, you allow your readers to skim through the first sentences of every paragraph to get a quick overview of your entire article. 

20. Making Data Meaningful:
Write like a journalist - The “inverted pyramid”: Journalists use the “inverted pyramid” style. Conclusions at the top of the news story, and followed with secondary points in order of decreasing importance throughout the text.

21. Making Data Meaningful:
Some tips for clear writing:
Use short sentences;
Aim for one idea per sentence;
Break up long sentences;

22. Making Data Meaningful:
Some tips for clear writing:
Start each paragraph with the most important message;
Keep paragraphs short;
Keep your writing crisp.

23. Making Data Meaningful:
The lead: Your first paragraph The first paragraph, or lead, is the most important element of the story. The lead not only has to grab the reader’s attention and draw him or her into the story, but it also has to capture the general message of the data.

24. Making Data Meaningful:
The lead: Your first paragraph
The lead is not an introduction to the story. On the contrary, it should tell a story about the data.
It summarises the story line concisely, clearly and simply.

25. Making Data Meaningful:
The lead: Your first paragraph
The Lead should not summarise the whole report.
The Lead provides the most important and interesting facts.
The Lead should not be packed with assumptions, explanations of methodology or information on how the data have been collected.
You might be wondering, “How do I write using the inverted pyramid style?”  First, make your initial paragraphs contain all of the most relevant details of the article. A good guideline for these details is to use the 5 W’s and the 1 H: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. Satisfy these essential points in your opening paragraph and you are already using the inverted pyramid writing style. Just by addressing these points you probably have summarised the article as a whole in a few sentences. If you haven’t, go back and rewrite your introduction so it does! This concept of front-loading an article can also be applied at the paragraph level as well, and makes it easy for your readers to skim a whole article just by reading the first sentence of each paragraph.

26. Making Data Meaningful:
Tips for Writing a Lead
Specificity: Though you are essentially summarising information in most leads, try to be specific as possible. If your lead is too broad, it won’t be informative or interesting.

27. Making Data Meaningful:
Tips for Writing a Lead
Honesty: A lead is an implicit promise to your readers.
You must be able to deliver what you promise in your lead.

28. Making Data Meaningful:
Tips for Writing a Lead
Brevity: Leads are often short and concise.
Specificity: A lead should be as specific as possible.
Active sentences:  Strong verbs will make the Lead lively and interesting.

29. Making Data Meaningful:
Tips for Writing a Lead
Audience and context:  Taking into account what the reader already knows.
In today’s media culture, most readers become aware of breaking news as it happens.

30. Making Data Meaningful:
Tips for Writing a Lead
Focus on one or two findings
Write in everyday language (the “popular science” level)
Create images for your readers

31. Making Data Meaningful:
Tips for Writing a Lead
Focus on the things you want readers to remember;
Choose the points you think are newsworthy and timely.

32. Making Data Meaningful:
Tips for Writing a Lead
What to Avoid:
Flowery language:  overuse of adverbs and adjectives in the leads.
Unnecessary words or phrases: (unintentional) redundancy. For example, 2 p.m. Wednesday afternoon

33. Making Data Meaningful:
Tips for Writing a Lead
What to Avoid:
Formulaic leads:   Readers want information, but they also want to be entertained. The lead must sound genuine, not merely mechanical.

34. Making Data Meaningful:
Tips for Writing a Lead
What to Avoid:
It: Most editors frown on leads that begin with the word “it” because it is not precise and disorients the reader.

35. Making Data Meaningful:
Good writing techniques
Terms meaningful to an economist may be foreign to a layperson, so avoid jargon.
Use everyday language as much as possible.
If you have to use difficult terms or acronyms, you should explain them the first time they are used.

36. Making Data Meaningful:
Good writing techniques
Large numbers are difficult to grasp. Use the words millions, billions or trillions. Instead of 3,657,218, write “about 3.7 million.”
You can also make data simpler and more comprehensible by using rates, such as per capita or per square mile.

37. Making Data Meaningful:
Good writing techniques
Use:
Language that people understand;
Short sentences, short paragraphs;
One main idea per paragraph;
Subheadings to guide the reader’s eye;

38. Making Data Meaningful:
Good writing techniques
Use:
Simple language: “Get,” not “acquire.” “About,” not “approximately.” “Same,” not “identical”;
Bulleted lists for easy scanning;

39. Making Data Meaningful:
Good writing techniques
Use:
A good editor. Go beyond Spell-Check; ask a colleague to read your article;
Active voice. “We found that…” Not: “It was found that....”;

40. Making Data Meaningful:
Good writing techniques
Use:
Numbers in a consistent fashion: For example, choose 20 or twenty, and stick with your choice;
Rounded numbers (both long decimals and big numbers);

41. Making Data Meaningful:
Good writing techniques
Use:
Embedded quotes (these are sentences that generally explain “how” or “why”, and which journalists like to use verbatim in their news stories in quotes);
URLs, or electronic links, to provide your reader with a full report containing further information.

42. Making Data Meaningful:
Good writing techniques
Avoid:
“Elevator statistics”: This went up, this went down, this went up;
Jargon and technical terms;
Not explained Acronyms;

43. Making Data Meaningful:
Good writing techniques
Avoid:
All capital letters and all italics: Mixed upper and lower case is easier to read;
“Table reading”, that is, describing every cell of a complex table in your text.

44. Making Data Meaningful:
Make the numbers “stick”
Numbers don’t “talk”. But they should communicate a message, effectively and clearly.
How well they do this depends a lot on how well authors use numbers in their text.

45. Making Data Meaningful:
Make the numbers “stick”
In a sense, journalists and statisticians are from two cultures. They tend not to talk the same language.
Journalists communicate with words; statisticians communicate with numbers.

46. Making Data Meaningful:
Some suggestions for making the data
“stick”:
Don’t peel the onion. Get to the point
Avoid proportions in brackets
Avoid changing denominators
Reduce big numbers to understandable levels

47. Visual elements

48. Making Data Meaningful:
Visual elements “a picture is worth a thousand words”

49. Making Data Meaningful:
Visual elements One of the best techniques for understanding data is to visualize the numbers as a picture.

50. Making Data Meaningful:
Tips about visual presentations:
The target group: different forms of presentation may be needed for different audiences (e.g. business or academia, specialists or the general population).

51. Making Data Meaningful:
Tips about visual presentations:
The role of the graphic in the overall presentation: analysing the big picture or focusing attention on key points may require different types of visual presentations.

52. Making Data Meaningful:
Tips about visual presentations:
How and where the message will be presented: a long, detailed analysis or a quick slideshow.

53. Making Data Meaningful:
Tips about visual presentations:
Contextual issues that may distort understanding: expert or novice data user.

54. Making Data Meaningful:
Tips about visual presentations:
Whether textual analysis or a data table would be a better solution.

55. Making Data Meaningful:
Tables:
Five support components are needed to describe the data displayed in a table:

56. Making Data Meaningful:
Charts:
Statistics can often be better understood when they are presented in a chart than in a table.
A chart is a visual representation of statistical data, in which the data are
represented by symbols such as bars or lines.

57. Making Data Meaningful:
Charts:
Charts can be used to illustrate patterns in a large amount of data or to
communicate a key finding or message.

58. Making Data Meaningful:
Charts:
You should consider using charts if you
want to show:
Comparison: How much? Which item is bigger or smaller?
Changes over time: How does a variable evolve?

59. Making Data Meaningful:
Charts:
You should consider using charts if you
want to show:
Frequency distribution: How are the items distributed? What are the differences?
Correlation: Are two variables linked?
Relative share of a whole: How does one item compare to the total?

60. Making Data Meaningful:
A good chart:
grabs the reader’s attention;
presents the information simply, clearly and accurately;
does not mislead;

61. Making Data Meaningful:
A good chart:
displays the data in a concentrated way (e.g. one line chart instead of many pie charts);
facilitates data comparison and highlights trends and differences;
illustrates messages, themes or storylines in the accompanying text.

62. Making Data Meaningful:
Reconsider using charts when data:
are very dispersed;
have too few values;
have too many values;
show little or no variation.

63. Making Data Meaningful:
BAD EXAMPLE
GOOD EXAMPLE
All components have maximum impact. The result is a busy chart, difficult to read, even though it shows only three values.
This chart is much easier to read. Minimal use of support components ensures that data
take centre stage.

64. Thank you
CONTRACTOR IS ACTING UNDER A FRAMEWORK CONTRACT CONCLUDED WITH THE COMMISSION