Abstract
The paper presents a series of reflections deriving from teaching official statistics. Much of the accumulated experience derives from teaching in the “Methods and tools for official statistics” and “Survey methods: traditional and new techniques in Official Statistics” courses in the European Master in Official Statistics (EMOS) at the universities of Florence and Pisa, as well as on numerous occasions at tertiary education centres. Such experiences highlighted the lack of the themes in question within the standard study plans and the scarce awareness of students about the official statistics; and allowed the identification of the essential topics to be addressed. Four basic pillars (definitions, quality criteria and practices, sources, and autonomy in finding official data) need to be spread much more than only by statistical authorities. Manuals on basic statistics (data-science) should always foresee one or more chapters dedicated to the recognition of quality data and official statistics. Teachers from any discipline which implies the transmission of the value of high quality statistical information need to be trained on this aspect. The general insight of the experience of teaching official statistics is that if data science may remain a specialist knowledge, statistical literacy needs to become a common one.
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