Indicators

COINr is an open-source R package for building and analysing composite indicators, developed by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre.

Happy to announce the formal start of a new project. COINr! ….and what is that, you may ask. Well, let me begin with a bit of background. Building composite indicators requires quite a number of steps, including denomination, imputation, normalisation, weighting, aggregation, multivariate analysis, sensitivity analysis, visualisation and others besides.

Here’s something that crops up all the time in indicators, but is discussed less than you might think.

Why use composite indicators? After all, as critics are eager to point out, they are full of subjective decisions and uncertainties, you’re basically adding apples and oranges together, and no one is really sure what the result actually means.