Nigel Marriott's Blog

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

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UK General Election 2024 #2 – My Forecasting Model

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My UK General Election 2024 forecasting model will be a top down version which I last used in 2010.  Top down approaches first predict how many seats each party will win in total before seeking to identify which seats each party wins.  This differs from the bottom-up approach I used in 2017 & 2019 where I forecast the outcome for each seat first and then aggregated the forecasts.

Here I explain how my 2024 forecast will be made but it finishes with a warning that I may have to dump my 2024 model in favour of the forecasting approach I used for the 2015 general election.

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UK General Elections #7 – How accurate are voting intention polls? – Revised

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Voting intention polls in the UK are accurate after all!

For years, I’ve observed that UK polls on average underestimate the Conservative vote and overestimate Labour’s vote.  When I converted poll data into forecasts of seats won, I had to first estimate how much polling error there would be.  So what’s changed?  It turns out I was comparing polls to the wrong statistic, namely national vote share.  The correct comparator is in fact average vote share per seat.

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UK Weather Trends #31 – Spring 2024

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Spring 2024 in the UK was the hottest on record.  In some ways this is surprising given it was also the 10th dullest and 6th wettest spring on record which is inconsistent with trends over last 25 years and with the typical correlations seen in spring.  With any other dataset, I would ask for a check on the temperature data to see if it is correct.

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UK Weather Tracker #88 – May 2024

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This was the warmest May on record in the UK which surprised me at first when I saw the data.  Then I saw that where I live (in the South West), it was the 3rd warmest but everywhere else in the UK set a new record.  Notably, the new temperature record was set despite below average sunshine and normal rainfall which may be another reason why I was surprised by the new temperature record.  Finally, as I pointed out in June last year, statistically the previous record looked artificially low relative to the upper decile so a new record is perhaps not that great a surprise.
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Trophy Winners #1 – England Men’s Club Football 1889 to 2024

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The 2023/24 football season is over and it now 55 seasons since my team Newcastle Utd last won a trophy.

For supporters of other teams, especially Man City, Man Utd and Liverpool, your life will have been more fortunate but if you can’t remember the last time your team won a trophy then why not download my spreadsheet listing all trophy winners since 1889 to find out.

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Trophy Winners #2 – England Women’s Club Football 1992 to 2023

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The 2023/24 Women’s Super League (WSL) ended with Chelsea winning their 5th title in a row.  Man Utd won their first ever trophy and Arsenal took the League Cup.

If you are new to the women’s game in England (especially following the Lionesses winning the European Championship in 2022), why not download my spreadsheet listing all trophy winners since 1992 to find out which teams are the GOATs of English women’s football?

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UK Weather Tracker #87 – April 2024

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The weather in the UK in April 2024 was abnormal but not in the way I thought.  My wife and I ended the month with stinking colds so surely it was a colder April than but no, the Met Office insists it was above.  It was noticeably darker and wetter than normal with this April being the 6th wettest on record.
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Stats Training Materials – Pay Gap Analytics

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The 5 steps to close a pay gap are –

  1. Define what success looks like i.e. where you want to be in the future.
  2. Measure where you are today.
  3. Analyse your data to understand why you are where you are today & what the key drivers are of your gaps
  4. Identify & implement actions that will move you from today to where you want to be.
  5. Continuously monitor key drivers to ensure you are on the right track

All steps require the use of statistical thinking and statistical methods.  Of course, other skills and processes are also needed but they cannot succeed on their own without the help of statistics

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