In praise of a good figure

Statistics are boring. Our eyes glaze over when some expert comes on the telly droning on about the trade figures and economic trends and blah blah blah… We’re just not interested. Unless.

Unless the stats are about an area we live in or work in or visit, and relate to our own lives. For instance, trainee nurses and social workers are sent out to construct a social and health-related profile of the area in which they are going to be working. This used to be really difficult, and now it’s a lot easier.

ONS gets it right (shock!)

Neighbourhood Statistics comes from the Office for National Statistics (ONS). After they went electronic, the ONS went round whining to anyone who’d listen that nobody was using their services. Then the penny dropped – the statistics were so difficult to find that almost nobody had the stamina for the journey. Neighbourhood Statistics is one – very good – answer to the problem.

I decided to be parochial (that’s what it’s for) and find stuff on my local borough, Westminster. I had to select what sort of area I was looking for, in this case "local authority". In a new window, up popped a list of topics, including census figures, crime and safety, education, health and housing. Choose housing, and 34 different sets of figures are on offer, from total numbers of dwellings to persons per room.

As long as your computer will open a PDF, you should have no problem looking at the statistics on this site. If, however, you want to see some rather clever maps, you will need software which isn’t always installed. Free versions of this necessary software can be downloaded as long as you have the authority to do that (might be a problem at work).

The ONS are embroiled in a row about easy access to their family records (there isn’t any), but for Neighbourhood Statistics they’ve got it sussed.

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Statistics & figures". Neighbourhood Statistics (a sub-link of Office for National Statistics) is under "Official statistics".)

NHS success (double shock!)

Community Health Profiles sounds rather narrow in scope. It is provided by the NHS, and with a name like that you probably wouldn’t expect them to include income inequalities and ethnicity. But presumably they have figured out that these factors affect people’s health, so here they are.

For Westminster, there is a four page "snapshot" of health (and other) information for the borough, with a sketch map.

Students and trainees exploring their adopted area can probably find most of what they need from these two resources.

(From the Gateway to websites, select "Statistics & figures". Community Health Profiles is under "Official statistics".)

Picture credit: matthew_hull/morguefile.com