‘What the budget numbers tell us, and what they don’t’ an RSS-getstats parliamentary panel event took place on 19 March. Read on for a brief account of discussion. Budgets are ‘political’ and interpretation of the numbers they present will always be ‘pluralist’, the RSS getstats panel audience was told - the event taking place a day before Chancellor George Osborne did his best to prove the point. But recognising political reality did not exonerate government,

We are extremely pleased to announce that the new Chair of the getstats Campaign Board is Robert Chote, Chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). Looking forward to his new role, Robert said “The campaign is a great initiative. Improving public understanding of numbers, quantitative data and statistics is a huge challenge – for schools and colleges, journalists and bloggers, parliamentarians and commentators and civil servants and business people

Evidence, data and numbers must be built into the DNA of Whitehall, it was asserted at this week’s launch of a new government initiative to improve the use of experiments and trials in public policy. Oliver Letwin, the Cabinet Office minister said that “Government must become more rational”, hence the new ‘What Works’ centres which will draw on research to test whether policies on crime, local economic growth, ageing, health

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have taken the decision not to publish school performance indicators. This is not the case in England. Last week saw the release of the DfE’s school league tables based on the results of Summer 2012 exams in 4,000+ state and independent secondary schools. During the same week, the British Academy’s Policy Centre published ‘School League Tables: a short guide for head teachers and governors‘. The guide’s author, Harvey Goldstein

After a short review, the Office for National Statistics has decided to leave the Retail Price Index (RPI) unchanged. Instead, a new additional index of inflation – RPIJ (the ‘J’ stands for Jevons, a new geometric formula) – will be brought in by March 2013. It’s a very important issue. The RSS statement on the announcement spells it out: “how inflation measures are calculated is not just a technical issue for

Happy 2013 ! An opportunity for a fresh start, a new era. A time when most of us (let’s admit it) have given some thought to New Year resolutions. But which resolutions? and how good are we at keeping them? The top 10 most common resolutions* are listed at Statistic Brain and we can reveal that…at no 1 we have… ”Lose weight’ and at no 10 we have ‘Spend more time with family’.

A new report Measuring the Economic Benefits of Mathematical Science Research spells out and puts a figure on the economic value of maths research in the UK.  Its messages are powerful. Researchers found that the value added to the economy by maths research directly is £208 billion, approximately 16% of the UK’s total Gross value added (GVA)  (the value of output less the value of intermediate consumption). It is estimated that in 2010,

On Thursday 18 October, the eve of getstats‘ second anniversary, BBC Four will be showing a documentary on statistics and probability. ‘Tails You Win:the science of chance” will be presented by David Spiegelhalter, Royal Statistical Society fellow, getstats board member and long-time champion for greater statistical literacy in society. We spoke to David about what it was like to make the BBC documentary, and how to engage teenagers in the

The getstats campaign aims to improve how we handle numbers – the practical numbers of daily life, business and policy. Statistics are tools that turn data into useful information and help us to make better and well-informed decisions. As the supply of data increases, statistical understanding becomes more and more useful, in parliament as among the public at large. To this end, RSS-getstats has  - with the support of the House

Euro 2012? ….England may be out but the statistics were not entirely out. In Ian McHale’s model, penalties were assumed to be 50-50. And as Roy Hodgson told BBC Sport earlier today: “A player’s reputation should not be forged on a penalty shoot-out, their reputation should be forged on the four games and in those four games we have not lost.”. To find out more about a stats approach to penalty