“We understand the universe much better than we understand our own societies” said Professor Helbing, Chair of Sociology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, at this year’s annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Dirk Helbing was speaking at a session entitled “Predictability: from physical to data sciences”. This was an opportunity for participating scientists to share ways in which they have applied statistical methodologies they usually use in the physical sciences to

In 1917, the first year for which there are records, King George V sent birthday cards to 24 British centenarians to congratulate them on turning 100. Since the beginning of her reign Elizabeth II has sent over 110,000 100th birthday telegrams/cards to delighted recipients. In passing, a recent article in The Independent noted the expected number of Britons aged 100 or more would be 100,000 in 25 years time and calculated that our then monarch will be congratulating centenarians “at a rate of 250

Three cheers for the elected members of West Sussex County Council - they have signed up for International Year of Statistics (Statistics2013) on the grounds that statistics cannot any longer remain the ‘invisible science’. Louise Goldsmith, leader of the county council, says ‘statistics are essential for planning future council services, such as creating school places and other important infrastructure decisions. ‘They allow us to assess and monitor our projects and services, adding value and enabling

So bad that comments are unnecessary … A Daily Telegraph headline: Essex teenager has higher IQ than Einstein The story in brief: a 16-year-old girl has scored 161 on the Mensa IQ test. Einstein never took an IQ test as none of the modern intelligence tests existed during the course of his life, but experts believe he had an IQ of around 160. And a ‘helpful’ gloss: the IQ test is designed to test

“New figures tell us that the richest 4,000 taxpayers in the UK, the total number of UK income taxpayers who earn more than £2million a year, pay 4.5 % of the UK’s income tax. Discuss.” At the end of last month, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) released data on Income Tax Liability Statistics and shortly after, discussion around a headline statistic from the report kicked off ‘heated debate’ on a late night

Though the government has promised to maintain real-terms spending on the NHS, healthcare managers are under severe pressure to find savings, in order to find room to cope with growing demands for care and the costs of the massive reorganisation the government has pushed through. Attention turns to ‘productivity’. Sir David Nicholson, chief executive of the NHS Commissioning Board, has demanded NHS trusts in England find £20billion worth of productivity

In the BBC Sport website article ‘Managerial league table 2012-13: Who leads the way?’ each manager in the top 4 divisions is ranked using an approach based on the points per game record they have obtained this season. Top of the league is Sir Alex Ferguson (his team, Manchester United is at the top of the Premier League table). Whilst it would be hard to argue that Sir Alex is not

From April this year, the government is bringing in a sweeping set of changes to social benefits, with new names, new rules and – the Department of Work and Pensions has just launched a consultation - new statistics. The government is calling the new scheme Universal Credit. The original idea had been to roll together the cash support offered poor households, but that has proved too difficult: separate benefits for pensioners,

Adverts for financial products say – though usually in tiny print at the bottom of the page – past performance is no guide to how things will be in future. Stuff happens, such as banks collapsing, stock markets imploding, wars, pestilence (and their opposites, too, booms and prolonged prosperity included). Put the point in the sort of language statisticians use and you might say extrapolating from yesterday’s trends makes for a dubious

Since proposed reforms of the welfare system were announced two years ago, we have regularly heard reference to Universal Credit, the new benefit set to replace six of what are currently the main means-tested welfare benefits and tax credits. But without a sense of how levels of existing claims have changed over time, how many people are claiming in each authority, the age profile of claimants etc…without having access to