Stats and Stories
Discourse ZA
English - February 09, 2023 10:42 - 50 minutes - 46.2 MB - ★★★★★ - 1 ratingBusiness News News Education economics politics southafrica news philosophy Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Bronwyn Williams & Pali Lehohla | The Small Print
“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” - Charles Goodhart
In this episode, Bronwyn speaks to Statistician General of South Africa, Dr. Pali Lehohla. They discuss how statistics can be abused to tell one’s preferred narrative, the difficulty of extracting truth from numbers without politicising them, and how an overreliance on GDP as a metric can come at the cost of human happiness. Bronwyn and Pali also talk about the prevalence of poverty in South Africa, the necessity to view it through a dimensional lens, and how current ANC policies are failing to address the underlying problems.
Bronwyn Williams is a futurist, economist, trend analyst and host of The Small Print. Her day job as a partner at Flux Trends involves helping business leaders to use foresight to design the future they want to live and work in. You may have seen her talking about Transhumanism or Tikok on Carte Blanche, or heard her talking about trends on 702 or CNBC Africa where she is a regular expert commentator. When she's not talking to brands and businesses about the future, you will probably find her curled up somewhere with a (preferably paperback) book. She tweets at @bronwynwilliams.
Dr. Pali Lehohla is the Statistician General of South Africa, a position he held since November of 2000. He is the Chair of Africa Symposium for Statistical Development (ASSD), a country-led initiative established in 2006 and the aim of which is to put statistical evidence at the centre of policy in Africa. From 2005 to 2010 he served in a variety of portfolios, including as the Chair of the United Nations Statistics Commission, Chair of Statistics Commission Africa and also Chair of PARIS21 a global partnership for statistical development in the 21st Century.
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