Summary
The theme of this year's statistical report is balance, which means equilibrium, from Latin aequus=equal and libra=pair of scales. It indicates a situation where there is an exact distribution of components in a set. Analysing the society, the economy and the environment in which we live with this approach, from a statistical point of view, inevitably brings us to evaluate the possible balance or rather, the imbalances that characterise the world around us.
Balance has both an intrinsic nature, i.e., how a single component is balanced or not in itself, and an extrinsic nature, i.e., how different components interact with each other in such a way as to achieve a global balance or not. The nature of balance is also unstable: human societies are characterised so much by change, that the point of balance can only be reached at certain times, then giving way to other situations of imbalance that will then return to rebalance in a play destined to change over time.
