Doctors have to have a minimum understanding of basic statistics and if they don’t they put patients and professional integrity at risk. That surely is a lesson from the report of the Mid-Staffs inquiry and now the enforced closure of a children’s heart unit at Leeds. Doctors will complain their training curriculum is already crowded – they don’t just have to conquer medicine but acquire personal, business and (if they are to

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

With the UK education landscape seemingly set for major change…..it is interesting to see what the latest statistics are telling us about the performance of the UK’s education system compared with other developed countries and the particular challenges the UK faces. This month’s Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ‘Education at a Glance’ report, compares the performance of OECD countries’ education systems. “High-performing countries” achieve high levels of equity for all students regardless of socio-economic background and

Measuring relative success is all about getting as near as possible to comparing like with like. Looking closely at the data helps. We instinctively understand the difference between relative and absolute figures. For example,  we know that comparing the numbers of babies born in one country with another provides much less interesting and/or useful information than looking at the birth rate  i.e. babies born per 1,000 population, in each of those countries. We also know that

John Fraser, TACTICIAN.org.uk and Dr Nuran Fraser, Manchester Metropolitan University look at the benefits which data analysis bring to football. There has been a lot of recent work around data analysis in football.  Driven by the increasing amounts of data in the game there is a clear need to harness that resource and understand its implications.  It really is a search for the Holy Grail in some respects as clubs would

In England’s ‘highly autonomous but highly accountable’ schools system, data has become even more important, according to the Education Secretary. In a letter to Graham Stuart MP, the chair of the Commons Education Committee,  Michael Gove lists the several classes of information needed to judge a school’s performance. But he left open the question of how educational data is to be assured and certified, and did not discuss the capacity

Reporting concerning his resignation could leave you confused about Fabio Capello’s performance as England manager over the last three years. Certainly the balance of opinion has not seemed to be in his favour. Lots of concessions, though.  There has been the occasional concession e.g. that he had made qualifying look easy. Good. These remarks were soon countered by reminders that he was was one of two England managers who oversaw the national team concede 4 goals in a World Cup finals game. Not so good. However….some

Sport is a great playground for a statistician. This is the view of Dr Ian McHale, a sports statistician at Salford University. Ian is one of the statistician duo who developed the model underpinning the EA Sports Player Performance Index (PPI). There are, he tells us, so many interesting problems and issues to investigate and plenty of data to interrogate and analyse in order to solve the problems. It is

Dr Bill Gerrard of Leeds University’s Business School has provided getstats with an insightful account of life as a statistical analyst with the Oakland A’s and the Saracens. It is the story of the role analysts play in evidence-based coaching in elite team sports.    _______________________________________________________ Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, the best-selling book by Michael Lewis and now a Hollywood movie, tells a real-life David-and-Goliath story of