Arts
“Caught & bowled!”
Ah Cricket – the wonderful sound of leather on willow followed by a cucumber sandwich and cup of tea. Rather coldly defined on Wikipedia as “a bat and ball game played between two teams of [more…]
Statistics
Mathematics
It’s all about the half time oranges!
I’ve often wondered whether there is a time in a football match that is the most likely point at which a goal might be scored. Perhaps in the first few minutes when the goalie is [more…]
Health
Nutritional Surveys, how believable are they?
First though, I hope this was anonymous. (Wikimedia Commons) UN Phone Survey Last month, a world-wide telephone survey was conducted by the UN. The only question asked was: “Would you please give your honest opinion [more…]
Health
A Brief Face To Face With Death
I was bored the other day and decided to download the Office of National Statistics Weekly Death data for England and Wales for the last 5 years (as you do). It can be found here [more…]
Health
Lives, damned lives and statistics
On January 11th, the BBC and Sky each made great play of ‘the worst excess deaths since the second world war’ announced for 2020. This clearly conveyed a message that the corona virus was indeed [more…]
Mathematics
Fake Data Qui Bono
My final article in my wee trilogy on data interpretation I examine who benefits from the manipulation of state data. It is usually sound policy when investigating the often bizarre antics of the state to [more…]
Mathematics
Some More Head Scratching Data
Apologies for returning to Covid-19 for examples of data oddities. But the situation coughs up, pardon the phrase, more anomalies every day. If Boris had read statistics not classics he would have spotted them. I [more…]
Mathematics
Data Interpretation, How the State & MSM Mislead You
Many years ago part of my professional exams included data interpretation, I studied further as my research role expanded to include pension fund management & mortality statistics. I particularly enjoyed distance learning with Austin University, [more…]
Arts