Nigel Marriott's Blog

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

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UK General Elections #10A – The Cursed Ratios of British Politics

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I used to be a commodity trader in the 1990s.  This wasn’t my day job, which was to forecast supply & demand, but I had the statistical skills to develop automated trading strategies for the traders I worked with.  These were either based on moving averages of futures prices (known as technical trading) or buy/sell signals based on the underlying supply & demand picture (known as fundamental trading).  I don’t trade commodities now but I’ve applied the stats skills I learned then to many time series since including those for elections and voting intentions.

Another trading strategy I could have used but didn’t was Chartism.  I vividly remember the training course I did on this and coming away gobsmacked.  How on earth were people being allowed to buy and sell millions using nothing more than astrology, spiritualism, numerology and other superstitions?!  I immediately swore of from Chartism and have managed to stay away from it until this year.  I hope you understand why it’s taken me many months to build up the courage to publish two articles where I use chartist superstitions instead of statistics to interpret long term trends in the vote shares of the major parties in the UK.

For this article, I explain why my charts show the Cursed Ratios of British voters are 52 : 26 : 13 : 6.5.  For my next article, I will have you fearing for my sanity…

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Electoral Trends #1 – The Fragmentation of the West

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Last month’s General Election in The Netherlands was won by a party with less than 17% of the national vote.  Dutch voters, politicians and pundits are now discussing what this means for a governing coalition which is likely to take a number of months complete.  For myself, the election was yet another data point showing the fragmentation of the electorate in the West is the key trend over the last 40 years.  As yet, there is no sign of this trend coming to an end and what the future holds I cannot tell.

**Update 24/04/26 – An updated version of the main chart below can be found at the end of this article**

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Pay Gap Case Study #8 – 33 London Councils – We Are One

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I am breaking a golden rule of pay gap reporting in this article, I am benchmarking the 33 London Borough Councils on their gender pay gap data!

Before you gasp in horror, let me say straightaway the outcome of this article is complete vindication of this golden rule.  Benchmarking of employer pay gap data is statistically worthless.  Pay gap data of all kinds is inherently multivariate and cannot be reduced to one number league tables.  The story I will tell of the 33 councils of London in 2024 proves this point in spades.  In effect, none of the councils have a gender pay gap despite all of them publishing data to the contrary.

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Pay Gap Data #8 – Where can I find gender pay gap data for 2024?

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This post was updated on 6th October 2025.  The next update is planned for early January 2026.

The government requires nearly all employers with a headcount of 250 or more on their snapshot date to submit gender pay gap data.  All data is available to the public and can be found on the government’s gender pay gap website.  I have downloaded this data and created a spreadsheet to present the data in a more user-friendly and visual format.

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Trophy Winners #3 – Rugby Union (Men) 1984 to 2025

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South Africa have won back to back Rugby Championships for the first time ever.  That marks the last trophy to be won in the 2025 calendar year for men’s rugby worldwide and coincides with the start of the 2025/26 season in Europe.  This makes it a propitious time to update my list of all trophy winners in men’s rugby worldwide since 1984,

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UK Weather Tracker #104 – September 2025

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After the hottest summer on record, the weather in the UK in September was unremarkable.  However, my local fishing club has just announced that a lake closed due to low water levels has reopened since water levels are back to normal so the above average rainfall in September has been welcomed in many areas.

 

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Stats Training Materials – Pay Gap Analytics

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*** Updated with links B16 and P9, P10 and P11 for 3 presentations I have given recently on gender & ethnicity pay gap reporting.  I have also added new sections I & J**

The 5 steps to closing a pay and/or representation 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. Implement actions which move you from where you are today to put you on the path to where you want to be in the future
  5. Control the key drivers to ensure you are on the right track

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

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