Tuesday 12 August 2014

3ie comment on video tutorials

3ie, the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, has sent a comment explaining why you need to register if you wish to take the useful tests that come with their video tutorials on impact evaluation. For some technical reason their comment cannot be displayed under my original post (below), so I am taking the liberty to post it right here:

Thursday 7 August 2014

Video tutorials on impact evaluation

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) have published a set of six video lectures on impact evaluation. They are available here. The lectures are presented by different specialists; the slides accompanying the lectures can be downloaded from the same website.

Monday 4 August 2014

Ending violence against women - what works?

In case you have not come across this yet: the UK Department for International Development (DFID) has published a whole series of "How To Notes" and "Evidence Digests" to guide work on violence against women and girls. There is a dedicated web page (click on the link to get there) where you can download the guides. 

The web page includes a link to Violence against Women and Girls Newsletters, which are published at quarterly intervals. The newsletters are rich in information on a wide range of interventions and tools.

Quality and quantity

In this holiday season I visited my sister, who has been passionate about gardening. I brought a beautifully illustrated book for her, about pear orchards in Prussia. Prussia, a belligerent kingdom that ceased to exist in 1918, was mainly known for its military dominance in the region, and for an obsession about order and discipline. So I was hardly surprised to find, in that book, a table showing drawings of differently shaped pears, arranged in neat rows and columns. The roundest pears were displayed near the top left corner, the thinnest, longest ones near the bottom right, with dozens of intermediary states in-between. Every pear came with a drawing of its appearance, as well as a transversal cut, which was criss-crossed by lines and dots dividing it into neat circles and measurements. "Look," I exclaimed, "the Prussians developed a system to classify pears!" My sister took a quick glance and responded, somewhat bitterly, "according to size, of course".