The mixed results from a recent IPSOS MORI survey commissioned by the Royal Statistical Society and King’s College London show there’s more work to be done to improve the public’s understanding of statistics, and of the role of statistics in their own lives and in policy making. Only a few days after a senior government member was reprimanded by the UK Statistics Authority for making tenuous claims about one of

Statisticians may sometimes seem over- meticulous and detail-obsessed – but if anyone can see the wood for the trees, it’s them. By checking through detail, they are really just bringing everything together so that they can look at the big picture. At the weekend, in an interview on Radio 4 the ONS’s chief economist Joe Grice said that the ‘did it/didn’t it?’ debate around the UK and double dip recessions was “counter productive” and that we’d

John Pullinger, President of the Royal Statistical Society on why it is vital that our education system provides young people with the statistical skills our economy needs The big political question today is where the UK’s future economic growth is going to come from. One area where we are well placed to thrive internationally is in managing the explosion of data. We have produced outstanding firms like Dunnhumby (who manage

We’ve been here before, but that doesn’t make the pain of statistical abuse any lighter. A government, down in the polling dumps, gets anxious to extol its policies. It seizes eagerly on any sign they are working. Temptation looms, in the shape of exaggerating or, as some would say, actively misinterpreting data. The Department of Work and Pensions is in the firing line over statements made about the flow of claimants

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

This year’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) adjustment of the goods and services ‘shopping basket’ which underpins the RPI and CPI measures of inflation has captured the media’s imagination. Not least the fact that champagne is no longer included in the basket. Whilst it’s interesting to look for the effects of austerity Britain in the new basket contents and easy to view it as a pop thermometer of what’s ‘hot’

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

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

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

The push is on to help charities and the voluntary sector to be better consumers and producers of statistics. At a recent meeting convened at the Royal Statistical Society, representatives of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, the UK Statistics Authority, the Third Sector Research Centre and major players in the sector such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation resolved to work together to improve uptake and training. For its part the