-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The government has rejected an “opinion poll” by Thomson Reuters Foundation that said India is the most dangerous country for women, saying the conclusion is not based on any data but solely on subjective opinion. With the report — which names India as more unsafe than strife-hit Syria and Iraq where violence against women is endemic, or deeply conservative Saudi Arabia with its discriminatory laws —...

-The Hindu Trust in official statistics is vital for democracy — the new policy must avoid centralisation David Spiegelhalter, president of Royal Statistical Society in the U.K., gave a most unusual presidential address in 2017. Instead of talking about esoteric statistical techniques, he talked about declining trust in numbers in a post-truth society bombarded by fake news and alternative facts. He recommended to the statistical community that the best way of inspiring...

-Business Standard The dilemma regarding reliability is usually the greatest around the release of advance estimates Analysts at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have questioned the numerous revisions in gross domestic product (GDP) data by the statistics office. RBI has said this confuses analysts about the economy. It suggested the Central Statistics Office (CSO) incorporate data on high frequency economic indicators such as commercial vehicles and international air passenger traffic. It should...

-The Indian Express Biometric authentication by PDS dealers defeats the unique identity scheme’s purpose. An aborted scheme in Madhya Pradesh that relied on once-in-a-year authentication can curb exclusion errors. Aadhaar is in the news today partly because of security concerns and partly because of reports that the poor are unable to receive PDS rations because of failures in Aadhaar authentication. Here, we will focus on the latter with an eye to look...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Bombarding the Supreme Court with statistics to convince it about ease of doing day-to-day activities with Aadhaar, the Centre said 118.64 crore Indians, which is 88% of the population, had obtained Aadhaar and they used it 1,216.8 crore times for authentication purposes. "As of today, the total number of Aadhaar-based authentication is 12,168,022,172. Therefore, the Indian population has used Aadhaar-based authentication over 1,216 crore times to...