Nigel Marriott's Blog

An independent statistician using data to understand our world and to predict the future

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COVID19 Cases #1 – Latest Data and Trends for England

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Last updated on 27th September 2020

The latest data for COVID19 (Coronavirus) cases in England as of Saturday 26th September 2020 shows the number of people testing positive for COVID19 is up 60% from a week ago but this masks extreme regional disparities that make the national trend meaningless.  The North is in the grip of a second wave unlike the South which is not.  Unless recent trends in the North abate, the scenario of 50k positive tests per day by the end of October recently postulated by the Chief Scientific Officer remains feasible.

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Pay Gap Case Study #4 – What is the gender pay gap at Novartis UK?

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Welcome to my next case study where I look at the 2019 pay gap figures of Novartis UK.  They caught my eye when they posted on LinkedIn the following statement.

“… our 2019 gender pay report which highlights that on average, women earn more than men across all of our UK sites and divisions…“

When I looked at the two legal entities that were required to report gender pay gaps, I saw that both reported pay gaps favouring men instead.  Something odd is going here and it’s a perfect case study to show why anyone who analyses pay gaps needs to pay more attention to a Bletchley Park codebreaker from world war 2 who introduced the world to Simpson’s Paradox.

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Pay Gaps #17 – How to Spot an Incorrect Median Gender Pay Gap

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I have a spotted an incorrect median gender pay gap published by a well known name in a certain industry.  They shall remain nameless for now since I am trying to get them to accept their error and publish a new gender pay gap report on their website.  I know they have made an error because their published data violates the laws of mathematics as I will explain in this blog.  All it takes to spot such an error is a simple calculation you can do in your head and an understanding what the median measures.

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Pay Gaps #16 – Eliminate your gender pay gap by playing Blackjack!

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Imagine where you work, the median women earns 33% less than the median man where you work.  Although your workplace is gender balanced with 50:50 men:women, the pay gap exists because 1 in 4 of managers and 3 in 4 of the lowest paid admin staff are women.  How long will it take for the pay gap to disappear assuming that all future recruitment at all levels have 50:50 candidate pools with men and women equally likely to be appointed to the role?

Up to 25 years i.e. a generation

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COVID19 Deaths #2 – Are Public Health England’s Figures Misleading?

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During the first wave of the COVID19 epidemic, the daily number of deaths published by Public Health England (PHE) has been the main headline in the news.  On 17th July, Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Health, called for a review of this time series after a blog published by Yoon Loke & Carl Heneghan of Oxford University questioned whether definition used by this time series was appropriate.  I myself had noticed a change in the PHEr time series in my tracker of COVID19 deaths in England but I hadn’t understood why this might have been the case.  After looking at the data again in more detail, I have concluded that this time series is overestimating the number of deaths by 42 +/- 13 per day since the 23rd May and it needs to be revised otherwise it will create confusion should a second wave come.

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COVID19 Deaths #1 – Latest Data and Trends for England

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Last updated on 25th July 2020 – future updates will be infrequent.

The latest data for deaths due to COVID19 (Coronavirus) in England as of Friday 24th July 2020 show that the first wave of the pandemic is now over when one looks as excess deaths.  People will still be dying of COVID19 for weeks yet but the overall number of excess deaths is now negative.

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