Some statistics for (war)gamers from the Guardian

There's a lot of interesting stuff out there that doesn't end up in wargames blogs. I'd like to draw your attention to the Guardian's Datablog which does daily updates on all kinds of subjects as long as they can hang a database on it. The Guardian is one of the leading newsmedia in the use and visualisation of statistics, so worth your visit in any case. But they occasionally pick up war and wargame related stuff that I link through to here for your benefit:

You might have guessed that this image was from the Guardian

• A dozen maps and infographics from the Guardian during WWI: shipping losses and submarine sinkings, battlefields and recruiting
• Stats on Civilian casualties in Afghanistan compared to other conflicts
• Terror attacks in the US in the past 40 years: including date, location, groups responsible and target
• Country contributions to UN peacekeeping missions: including their deployment
• All mentions of characters in A Game of Thrones, listing relations, major events and killings
• Global Database on Events, Location and Tone, to collect all historical events. At present dating back to 1979, but will be expanded backwards in due course: "over 250m events in over 300 categories from riots and protests to diplomatic exchanges and peace appeals".

Some of the benefits of the Guardian approach is that the datasets are available for everyone and documented. This makes them much more accessible and transparent than the official sources and so easier to use for the public.