[LUG] Interesting bit of advocacy: Open source statistical analysis in the news

[Paul Hewson <P.J.Hewson@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Couldn't help passing this one on (worth mentioning to your local suits in 
case they are thinking of running a tin-pot dictatorship in their spare time)


> A student pointed out to me the article
>        http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51106,00.html
> describing recent testimony by Patrick Ball, the deputy director of
> the science and human rights program at the American Association for
> the Advancement of Science, at the war crimes trial of Slobodan
> Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president.
>
> Mr. Ball testified on a statistical analysis of the patterns of
> Albanian deaths and displacement in Kosovo that casts doubt upon
> Mr. Milosevic's claim that it was NATO bombing and not Serbian forces
> that caused the deaths and displacement.
>
> Mr. Ball makes the point that it is important that he used Open Source
> software for this analysis.  The article states
>
>  Ball added it was important to note that human rights work "is best
>  served by free software, so that any group who wanted to reproduce my
>  work could do so without a huge investment. I did the data processing
>  using Python, we used MySQL, and all the data coding teams used Linux
>  and Apache.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Paul Hewson, Postgraduate Statistics Student (part-time)
School of Mathematical Sciences, Laver Building,
University of Exeter, North Park Road, EXETER  EX4 4QE, U.K.

tel:   +44 1392 382773 fax: +44 1392 382135
email: P.J.Hewson@xxxxxxxxxxxx
personal home page http://www.maths.ex.ac.uk/Introduction/staff_pgs/Hewson_Paul.html
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