Real World Indices

I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be. - Lord Kelvin (1883).

Before you can understand the world you must first quantify it. A lot of myths fall by the wayside.

Some of my more notable attempts are the quantification of military power, aggregate mindpower, and corruption realities.

Introducing the Journalism Security Index (JSI)

This about Media, tagged , , , was written by for on January 30, 2012 .5 Comments

The Press Freedom Index issues by Reporters Without Borders is a good starting point for assessing journalistic freedoms in global comparative perspective. However, much like all attempts to measure democracy or Transparency International’s assessment of corruption perception, their methodology relies on tallying a number of intangibles that cannot be objectively estimated: Censorship, self-censorship, legal framework, independence. These […]

Karlin Freedom Index 2012

This about Politics, tagged , , , was written by for on January 24, 2012 .26 Comments

This is the Karlin Freedom Index for 2012, a political classification system I formulated more than a year ago in response to systemic bias on the part of traditional “freedom indices” such as Freedom House and The Economist Democracy Index (hint: they give massive bonus points for neoliberalism and pro-Western foreign policy orientations). The explanation: […]

Corruption Realities Index 2010

This , about Economy, tagged , , was written by for on May 25, 2011 .20 Comments

The most famous corruption indicator is Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Its only problem is that the perceptions of their self-appointed experts have nothing to do with reality! As I explained in previous posts on this blog, it suffers from numerous flaws. Part of it has to do with its questionable methodology: using changing mixes of […]

Introducing the Karlin Corruption Index (KCI)

This about Politics, tagged , , was written by for on October 10, 2010 .28 Comments

Following on the ground-breaking and globally acknowledged Karlin Freedom Index (which is of course by far the most objective, accurate, comprehensive and plain awesome democracy measuring tool available to political scientists today), I’m now revealing the Karlin Corruption Index (KCI) which rates transparency based on my own readings, personal impressions and bigoted prejudices. As with the […]

Measuring Democracy I: Introducing the Karlin Freedom Index (KFI)

This about Politics, tagged , , , was written by for on August 29, 2010 .26 Comments

I’ve been meaning to make an in-depth study of the 3 major “freedom indices” – Polity IV (the most objective one), the Economist Democracy Index (fairly arbitrary) & Freedom in the World (a purely ideological project) – for more than 2 years now, but have yet to come round to it. Though it remains on […]