Various members of the Anguillian public, including students in the upper forms of the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School, have benefitted much from an appreciation of the importance of statistics.
They were given many eye-openers about the real value of statistics, in everyday life and activity, at a symposium held at the Teachers’ Resource Centre on Thursday night, October 17.
The Statistical Symposium, organised by the Anguilla Statistics Department, had as its theme: “Statistics in Every Life – Let Us Educate and Appreciate.” The event was part of a series of activities for the observance of Statistics Week 2013 (October 13-18).
The first presentation was delivered by Mr Bancroft Battick, Chief Engineer at the Department of Infrastructure, who looked at statistical information from the perspective of the need for a new passenger terminal at Blowing Point. The second presentation was given by Mrs Dawn Reid, Education Services Planner. She examined the need to upgrade the Primary Schools, with special reference to The Valley Primary School. She noted that the work there so far, with the assistance of funding from the Windsong Foundation, had resulted in the completion of one new block at a cost of three million dollars. She disclosed that up to eight million dollars was needed to provide the other new buildings.
The third presentation was by Ms Doreen Buchnor, Coordinator of Pharmaceutical Services at the Princess Alexandar Hospital. She dealt with various aspects of health services and treatment.
There were also three short video presentations by Mr Hans Rosling, a Swedish medical doctor, academic, statistician and public speaker. The first presentation was entitled: “Improving human welfare in 2013 – International Year of Statistics”; the second: “US in a converging world”; and the third: “Statistics that reshape your world view”.
Chief Statistician, Mrs Lori-Rae Alleyne Franklin, spoke to The Anguillian about the event. “The symposium sought to share with the public the use of statistics in policy design and development in the various areas – infrastructure, education and health,” she stated. “The hope is that over the course of time, and each year, we would use other areas for presentation to members of the public – so that they can have a better understanding of how data is used across different ministries, departments and agencies to design and produce evidence-based policy, programmes and decisions.”
Meanwhile, Mrs Alleyne Franklin said, in an earlier press statement, that Statistics Week in Anguilla was held as part of the observance of the Fifth Caribbean Statistics Day on Tuesday, October 15, 2013. The effort was to continue to heighten awareness of the contribution of official statistics to the development of a society.
“The celebration of Caribbean Statistics Day will allow recognition of the pivotal role played by statistics in everyday life, at the national, regional and international level,” she continued. “Additionally, this year is being celebrated as International Year of Statistics and agencies all over the world, including statistical agencies, the United Nations and CARICOM, have endorsed this initiative. Therefore we, in Anguilla, will also be using other mediums to expose the general public to the area of statistics and its applicability to daily life.”
