Data 4 Policy: Understanding the Numbers That Govern Our World

By Walter J. Radermacher

Introduction

Numbers shape the world. They inform decisions, justify policies, and quietly encode values that affect millions of lives. This lecture series invites you to look behind the figures: to understand why quantification is a social and political act as much as a technical one, and why the ethics of data governance matter as never before.

Across three units, Walter J. Radermacher — drawing on decades at the frontier of European, national, and international statistics — guides you from the foundations of societal quantification through the normative architecture of values and governance, to the design and use of indicators as instruments of public reasoning.

Whether you come from academia, policy, or practice, these lectures offer both rigorous grounding and fresh perspective on one of the defining challenges of our data-saturated age.

_{Funding note
BERD Academy is part of BERD@NFDI; funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – 460037581}