Today, 20 October 2016, STATEC celebrated European Statistics Day for the first time, by opening a statistical information stand for the day just off Grand-Rue in the Ville de Luxembourg, on rue des Capucins. The stand offered information on the diversity and value of public statistics in Luxembourg.
In the afternoon, STATEC and Luxembourg’s Statistics Society held a conference on the subject of “Governance through numbers: the end of statistical history?” The speaker was Jacky Fayolle, the administrator for INSEE France.
In light of the publication of the book by French jurist and labour law specialist Alain Supiot, which criticised the use of numbers in governance at a time of ultra-liberalism, the European Day of Statistics seemed to be the perfect occasion to look critically at the role of statistics and statisticians in the political and social organisation of modern society.
Following Jacky Foyolle’s presentation, there was a round table discussion on the topic of numbers in governance, in which Serge Wilmes (MP), David Wagner (MP), Romain Hilgert (journalist), Aline Muller (managing director of LISER), Serge Allegrezza (director of STATEC), and Stephen Senn (Head of Competence Centre for Methodology and Statistics at LIH) participated.
