Radical Statistics
Encyclopedia
The Radical Statistics Group, usually known as "Radical Statistics" or "Radstats", is a group of statisticians based in Britain, which was initiated in 1975 following on the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science (BSSRS).

The mission statement
Mission statement
A mission statement is a statement of the purpose of a company or organization. The mission statement should guide the actions of the organization, spell out its overall goal, provide a path, and guide decision-making...

 on the RadStats website states:
We believe that statistics can be used to support radical campaigns for progressive social change. Statistics should inform, not drive policies. Social problems should not be disguised by technical language.


Radstats publishes a regular journal which has included contributions from a variety of British academics, including Peter Townsend and Danny Dorling
Danny Dorling
Daniel Dorling, frequently referred to as Danny Dorling, is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield. He is also a Professor at University of Canterbury and in the Department of Social Medicine of the University of Bristol.-Biography:...

.

History

The researchers and statisticians who started Radstats shared a common concern about the political implications of their work and an awareness of the actual and potential misuse of statistics
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....

.

Its journal has publications going back to 1975.

Activities

Radstats has had working groups in population studies, education, health, nuclear arms, 'race', and social indicators. Currently, only the population studies working group is active. It started activities in 2010, initiating an investigation into the debates on population and the environment that pose an ‘optimum population’.

It has an active mailing list
Mailing list
A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is referred to as "the mailing list", or simply "the...

 http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/RADSTATS.html,
is well integrated into the Royal Statistical Society
Royal Statistical Society
The Royal Statistical Society is a learned society for statistics and a professional body for statisticians in the UK.-History:It was founded in 1834 as the Statistical Society of London , though a perhaps unrelated London Statistical Society was in existence at least as early as 1824...

, and publishes a regular newsletter/journal. Its annual AGM and conference is usually a two-day social and business affair in February. The 2011 conference is on the theme Cuts and Corporations. In 2010 the Radical Statistics Blog http://radstats.wordpress.com/ focused on worldwide reports of cuts in public provision of statistics.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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