At the end of June, the IADB reported that public education enrolment in the Ecuadorian coastal provinces had increased with 6.5%. Last week, Ecuavisa, a major Ecuadorian Television Network reported that over 150 thousand students nationwide have transitioned from private to public institutions. To see how and if this will indeed happen, this brief article answers a variety of relevant questions through historical data.

The world is facing an unparalleled education crisis. At the time of writing, still over a billion learners in 143 countries are affected by school closures. In one of these countries, Ecuador, the government has responded by rapidly digitalising its education system. Despite these efforts, some columnists have publicly started to question the fairness of this approach. My brief analysis of household survey data collected in 2019 strengthens such worries. The data suggests that the government’s approach will exacerbate existing inequalities due to the unequal distribution of smart electronic devices, internet access and digital literacy.

This analysis aims to identify the storm weather events in the United States which have historically caused most damage to human health and the economy. Additionally, it aims to map the extent of damage caused by these particular weather events quantitatively. The analysis is based on data from the storm data base of the U.S National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which was collected between the year 1950 and November 2011 across the entirety of the United States. This project was submitted as part of the Reproducible Research course created by John Hopkins University. The two questions answered in this analysis and the links to the raw data were supplied by the course organisers. All code and analysis choices are my own.