Nigel Marriott's Blog

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

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COVID19 Deaths #2A – Estimated Excess Deaths in England up to 1st May

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In many countries across the world, the total effect of the Coronavirus pandemic is now being measured using the concept of Excess Deaths.  However, publication of such data by the Office of National Statistics for England is up to 2 weeks slower than the daily deaths published by Public Health England.  In this post, I explore how the PHE series can be used to estimate what the ONS will publish for excess deaths in England every Tuesday.

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Coronavirus #3 – How many people have died of COVID19 in the UK?

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The Financial Times (FT) has estimated the true number of COVID19 related deaths in the UK as of 20th April 2020 is 42,000 not 17,000 as published by the Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC).  In this article, I show that the FT headline is incorrect and is the result of either the FT comparing apples with pears due to a misunderstanding over what the various data sets measure or the FT attempting to estimate a number that can never be verified.

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Coronavirus #2 – What sample size does Boris need to lift all restrictions?

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April Fools day 2020 saw the hive mind of social media asking what the sample size should be to measure the extent of the Coronavirus in the UK.  I could see that many people responding were reaching for standard methodologies which are usually are based on specifying a desired confidence interval.  In doing so, they were overlooking a much more effective and relevant alternative based on the methodology of Acceptance Sampling, first developed by the US Military in World War 2.

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Pay Gaps #14 – Gender Pay Fingerprints are better than Gender Pay Gaps

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Recently, a lot of people have been making incorrect claims about what a gender pay gap tells you.  I have been pointing out these errors but in doing so, I am conscious I come across as a pedant or a negative voice.  The problem is that the official gender pay gap measure (the difference between the median man and the median woman) is just a single number and that single number does not capture the full nuance of what is going on.  I have decided it is time to introduce the Gender Pay Fingerprint to the world as an alternative and going forward, I will be encouraging people to use this instead.

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Pay Gap Case Study #3- Will the BBC’s gender pay gap narrow after losing to Samira Ahmed?

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The BBC presenter Samira Ahmed has won her claim for equal pay at the employment tribunal.  She successfully claimed that Jeremy Vine was an appropriate comparator for her pay.  She is not the only female presenter to make a claim with over 50 more claims under consideration at present.  Assuming that these are all successful, will these have any effect on the BBC’s gender pay gap for 2019 of 7p in the pound?

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Pay Gaps #13 – How could Ethnicity Pay Gap Reporting be introduced in the UK?

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On 5th February 2020, Baroness Prosser laid a bill in the House of Lords which calls for the introduction of ethnicity pay gap reporting in addition to a number of other initiatives.  Last year I explained why ethnicity pay gap reporting cannot follow the same process as gender pay gap reporting so now is the time to explore how ethnicity pay gap reporting could be carried out.

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