Statistics
Statistical reports, indicators and how to submit them
Lessons: from zero to confident
Topics in order: start with the first lesson and read them one by one. 2 lessons
1Lesson 1 What is statistics: how did a science of "affairs of state" turn into the language of numbers?The first lesson of the course: what statistics is in plain words, which languages the word came from and why it is connected with «the state», the mean and the median using a barbershop's customers over one week, and who has contributed to this field.Start →Where did it all begin?
From clay tablets to the Domesday Book: why were people counted in ancient times?
Statistics began not at a university but at the state granary: rulers needed to know how many people to feed, how many to tax and how many soldiers they could muster.
5 November 2026The London Bills of Mortality: how did statistics become a science?
In 1662 the haberdasher John Graunt compiled the churches' weekly bills of mortality and drew conclusions from them that nobody had expected. His friend William Petty named this method "political arithmetic".
5 November 2026Quetelet's "average man": how did statistics begin to measure society in the 19th century?
The Belgian scholar Adolphe Quetelet applied the methods of astronomy to people and put forward the idea of the "average man". The international statistical congresses he started helped make countries' figures comparable.
5 November 2026Knowing without asking everyone: how did the sampling method win out in the 20th century?
In 1934 Jerzy Neyman presented the theory of how to construct a sample correctly, and in 1936 a huge but badly constructed poll got the US election embarrassingly wrong. These two events taught statistics the lesson: "choose not many, but correctly".
5 November 2026Statistics from digital traces: how is big data changing official statistics?
Today data comes not only from questionnaires but also from phones, payment terminals and satellites. In 2014 the UN Statistical Commission set up a separate group to use this "big data" in official statistics.
5 November 2026Abu Rayhan al-Biruni: measurement, calculation and scientific accuracy
What do weighing a single ring and writing a book about an entire country have in common? For al-Biruni both obeyed one rule: measure it yourself, compare, check the source. Statistics needs exactly the same.
5 November 2026Mirzo Ulugh Beg: the Samarkand observatory and the star table
Gathering the positions of nearly a thousand stars into a single table was a great achievement not only of astronomy but also of collecting, checking and preserving data. Ulugh Beg's observatory, the "Zij-i Sultani" and the lessons it left for today's accountant.
5 November 2026The Galton board: why do randomly falling balls draw a "bell" shape every time?
No one can say where a single ball will land. A thousand of them, however, draw almost the same shape every time. This is about how Francis Galton's board of pins made one of the most important ideas in statistics visible, and how it can be repeated at school today.
7 November 2026Florence Nightingale: how did a nurse change army hospitals with figures and a diagram?
Most people know her as the nurse holding a lamp. But Florence Nightingale was also one of the strongest statisticians of her time: the first female member of the Statistical Society of London and the author of the famous "rose diagram". About how figures became evidence for reform and the secret of drawing a circular diagram correctly.
8 November 2026From state statistics to official statistics: Uzbekistan's statistics laws and the 2026 population census
Statistical work in Uzbekistan was governed first by the 2002 Law "On State Statistics" and, since 2021, by the Law "On Official Statistics". The statistics office was reorganised in 2022 and 2025, and at the start of 2026 the first nationwide population census since 1989 was held. Short theses and a calculation of how a per capita indicator changes when the population figure changes.
10 November 2026Articles and briefs
All →Benford's law: why do almost a third of amounts start with the digit 1, and how does this help find a fake document?
If you count the first digit of a thousand payment amounts, about 301 will be 1s and only 46 will be 9s. This is not chance, it is Benford's law. When does the law work, when does it not, and what might a sharp increase in amounts starting with 4 in a list of payments point to? A table and a checking procedure.
11 November 2026How many minutes should you promise a customer for delivery? Not the average, but the 90th percentile
Delivery takes 34.5 minutes on average. If you promise "delivered in 35 minutes", 6 of the 20 orders in the example, that is three in every ten, would have been late. What a percentile is, how to find the 90th percentile, why Excel gives a slightly different number, and which measure to base a service time on.
10 November 2026Moving average: when takings jump at weekends, how can you tell whether sales are really growing or not?
Sunday 7.7 million, Monday 4.1 million: takings "collapsed" by 47 percent in one day. In fact nothing collapsed, it is the ordinary weekly rhythm. A seven-day moving average removes this noise and shows that over three weeks average daily takings grew from 5.33 to 6.01 million soum. How to choose the window length and which mistakes to avoid.
9 November 2026Splitting a change in revenue into the price effect and the volume effect: the index method on the example of one shop
A shop's revenue rose by 2 million soum in a month. Is that because it sold more, or because prices went up? Value, price and volume indices on the example of three goods, how they are linked, and why two ways of calculating give two different answers.
8 November 2026Simple or weighted average: how to correctly calculate the average price and the average wage?
Using the average price of apples bought from three orchards and the average wage in a workshop, we show when a simple average gives a wrong result, how a weighted average is calculated and why the median is needed.
7 November 2026How should the plan fulfilment percentage be calculated, and how is it linked to the growth rate?
The plan was 105 percent fulfilled, while growth compared with last year is 15.5 percent. These two figures do not contradict each other: they are linked by a single formula. Three relative indicators and a trap in the cost plan.
6 November 2026ABC analysis: which goods bring in most of the revenue, and what should be done about it?
Four out of ten product groups bring in three quarters of revenue. Using a minimarket as an example, we carry out an ABC analysis step by step and compare the result with profit.
5 November 2026Horizontal and vertical analysis of the balance sheet: how can you see the change behind the figures?
Putting two years of balance sheets side by side is not enough: you need to calculate growth rates and shares. Two simple statistical methods, using a bakery as an example.
5 November 2026