The Economist (July 15)The Economist (July 15)
“The traditional census is dying, and a good thing too.” Statisticians now believe they can get more accurate (and less costly) data by mining existing government records, such as tax records and social security payments. Denmark started the trend, doing away with its traditional census decades ago. Sweden, Norway, Finland and Slovenia followed. And Germany plans to use this data-mining approach from 2011. This October, Japan will conduct a population census. Could it be the last?
“The traditional census is dying, and a good thing too.” Statisticians now believe they can get more accurate (and less costly) data by mining existing government records, such as tax records and social security payments. Denmark started the trend, doing away with its traditional census decades ago. Sweden, Norway, Finland and Slovenia followed. And Germany plans to use this data-mining approach from 2011. This October, Japan will conduct a population census. Could it be the last?
Tags: Census, Data mining, Denmark, Germany, Japan
