Assorted Links: 7th September 2010

1. The Hewlett Packard Social Computing Lab focuses on 'methods for harvesting the collective intelligence of groups of people in order to realise greater value from the interaction between users and information'.

2. "The agony and the ecstasy: the history and meaning of the Journal Impact Factor" (Garfield and Sher, 2005).

3. Measurement of administrative burden imposed on Irish business by Central Statistics Office inquiries

4. http://www.bundle.com: Track your spending

5. DIT School of Computing launches a new master's programme in data analytics

6. A story on the OECD's Education at a Glance 2010, in today's Irish Independent: "For every €7 spent on a primary pupil, nine is spent on second level and 12 is spent on third level".

7. Another Irish Independent story: the mechanics of random selection in the CAO application process

8. Bloomberg Businessweek: The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies

9. Below is a video from the OECD showing the importance of tax credits for understanding government funding of research and development (R&D). When tax credits are taken into account, Korea spends the most (as a percentage of GDP) on R&D. Canada spends ten times more on R&D tax credits than it does on direct funding for R&D.

Round-Up of News from the CSO

1. An Administrative Data Seminar will be held on February 22nd; the seminar programme is available here.

2. The Irish Government decided on 11 December 2009 that the 2011 census will take place on Sunday 10 April 2011. The Government also decided to include the following questions on the Census 2011 household form. Readers may be interested to know that the next census will provide information on general health status.

3. The Census Pilot Survey was conducted on the 19th April 2009. The accompanying report is available here.

4. Tomorrow, information will be released on County Incomes and Regional GDP for 2007.

5. On Friday, the Live Register information for December will be released.

CSO puts historical census figures online

Great news for all people interested in historical census figures. The CSO are now hosting PDF's containing the published 1926 to 1991 census of population reports. More here.

StatCentral.ie

Thanks to the Irish Economy blog for pointing us towards StatCentral.ie. Its a new CSO-maintained data site that brings together all the CSO data, plus data from a range of other official agencies. Should be useful.