In my first year at university, I became very curious to understand the world around us. By learning something new, a whole new world opens up for us. Learning has been a huge part of my life ever since. I like to make other people feel this craving for knowledge too.
The internet has enabled millions of people to get access to quality knowledge basically for free. Just think how projects like Wikipedia, MOOCs, or data.world have opened doors for many people - some of whom would otherwise not have had access to quality education and data at all. I have also benefited tremendously from some of these wonderful resources and I want to create useful resources for others too. This is how the idea for Steve Walesch Analytics came to life.
Why Analytics? Analytics is the field of data analysis and its goal is to gain knowledge that can be used to make improvements or changes. Everything we study consists of data and data analysis is basically everywhere. The knowledge we gain by studying helps us take better decisions and improve the world around us - from big goals, like the sustainable development goals to small decisions like which colours we should use for our presentations.
Steve Walesch Analytics will try to help with both, as it will study very diverse subjects. The focus will be mainly on higher level subjects like the economy, energy and sustainable development, but the same methodology will also be applied to other topics of interest like aromas and colour theory.
Making knowledge and data available is of course crucial, but not sufficient - people also have to understand what they are presented with. This is often a challenge in our complex world. For example we constantly read about the cost of different policies or projects (often in the billions of euros or dollars or as a percentage of GDP), or energy supply (often in gigawatt hours (GWh) or in million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe)). How do you put these numbers into perspective so that they make sense? Making data comprehensible is thus a major factor to consider. I believe that simple explanations and information visualization help many people comprehend the big picture permitting them to dig deeper into different subjects. This is a challenge to tackle.
All of this leads us to the mission statement of the project:
Stay tuned!