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Posts tagged “Indonesia”

Jul 29, 2026
15 min

The Survey Found Indonesia's Business Owners. It Just Couldn't Count Them.

Two in five Indonesian workers work for themselves, and there are ten million more of them than a decade ago. The world's best-known entrepreneurship survey records the opposite: a fall of roughly three quarters. It turns out the survey found them. What broke was the step that decides whether a business counts.

Data Indonesia Economics

Jul 27, 2026
17 min

The Easiest Promise to Keep Is the One You Can Count

Indonesia put an education spending share into its constitution, went to court to enforce it, and has met it every year since 2009. The money was budgeted exactly as promised. The reading was not. A percentage is a promise about an input, and it can be kept in full while the thing it was meant to buy stays out of reach.

Data Indonesia Education

Jul 21, 2026
11 min

The Internet's Favorite Lung-Cancer Dataset Says Smoking Is Harmless. It Isn't.

The most-downloaded lung-cancer dataset on the internet, run through the obvious analysis, says smoking barely matters for cancer. It is wrong, and the reason it is wrong is a trap every data scientist should be able to see. Smoking causes the large majority of lung cancer, and there is no safe amount.

Data Health Indonesia

Jul 14, 2026
9 min

The Most Generous Country on Earth Isn't the Happiest

No country on earth gives more than Indonesia, and few feel more daily joy, yet it ranks about 80th on the world happiness ladder. That gap is the whole story: how you rate your life and how you feel living it are two different questions, and the famous ranking only measures one of them.

Data IndonesiaHappiness

Jul 11, 2026
9 min

Nobody Builds a World Cup Team at Home Anymore

Indonesia missed the 2026 World Cup with a squad mostly born in the Netherlands, and half the country argued about whether that team was really theirs. So I counted where every qualifier's players actually work. Four in five play abroad, and Indonesia was not breaking the rules of the modern game; it was finally playing by them.

Data IndonesiaFootball

Jul 10, 2026
13 min

The Gaming-Addiction Number Nobody Checked

One Indonesian study flags 1.9% of young gamers as at risk of a gaming disorder; another finds 30.8% have already experienced one. A gap that size is not a fact about kids; it is a fact about measurement, and here is how an 'addiction score' gets built.

Data Indonesia Mental Health

Jul 9, 2026
12 min

Property Isn't the Hedge You Think

When Russia's currency collapsed in 2014, Moscow apartment prices didn't fall; they rose. That's exactly how property owners lost a third of their wealth in world prices without noticing. A data story about the most dangerous kind of stability.

FinanceInvestingIndonesia

Jul 9, 2026
5 min

Waking the Sleeping Giant

Last fall, I had the honor of moderating a conversation with Pak Gita Wirjawan, former Minister of Trade of Indonesia, at Columbia University. Here is what the discussion taught me about Indonesia's future, and why I believe our generation holds the key.

LeadershipIndonesia