Nigel Marriott – Page 35

Stats in the News #1 – Science & Technology March 2017

March 25, 2017 By Nigel Marriott

Welcome to my first post where I put my Evidence Hierarchy or Circle into practice and show you what is behind the headline.

Today I am concentrating on science and technology related articles from the BBC website since that is accessible to nearly everyone. As always, I am critiquing the article more than the research since I have not read the research papers that motivated the article. The 3 articles are:

“Fruit shaped sensor can improve freshness“.
“Robots to affect up to 30% of jobs“
“Dinosaurs may have UK origin“

[Read more…] about Stats in the News #1 – Science & Technology March 2017

Stats in the News #0 – The Evidence Hierarchy and how to use it

March 25, 2017 By Nigel Marriott

“Graduates aren’t skilled enough!” says a BBC headline. What is your immediate reaction? If you decide to find out more and read the article, you will see the following.

A brief reference to a survey of a 174 organisations, half of whom are apparently moaning graduate skills.
3 brief interviews with recent graduates asking what they wish they had learned before starting their job.

After reading this, do you feel that a case has been made that universities are slipping up? How much weight should you place on this article and the information it contains? One of the major problems with news these days is that we are bombarded with articles about so many things that it can difficult to sort the good from the bad, especially when articles are referring to data in one way or another. My Evidence Hierarchy provides a short cut to assess the usefulness of news articles and with a bit of practice, I hope the result will be less stress for you about what is going on in the world.

UK Opinion Poll Tracker #2 – 28 March 2017

March 24, 2017 By Nigel Marriott

On the eve of Article 50 notification and with speculation about an early election being called, my latest opinion poll tracker predicts the Conservatives would have a working majority of 143 seats if an election was held today. Since the Stoke Central by-election last month, it appears that some UKIP voters are switching to the Conservatives, the Lib Dem recovery is taking a breather and the 5 year decline in Labour’s fortunes shows no sign of coming to an end.

6 Nations #7 – Should there be promotion & relegation?

March 23, 2017 By Nigel Marriott

Throughout the 6 Nations this year (and in previous years) there has been a constant debate about whether promotion and relegation should be introduced. A lot of people have stated that Georgia have earned the right to play in the 6 Nations and that Italy have failed to make any progress over the 18 seasons they have been in the 6 Nations. Actually had promotion & relegation been in place this season, Italy would have been relegated and Romania would have been promoted after winning the Rugby Europe Championship with a narrow 8-7 win over Georgia in the last round. This win ended Georgia’s 6 year winning streak.

6 Nations #6 – How did the rankings do in 2017?

March 23, 2017 By Nigel Marriott

Ireland’s win over England brought the 2017 6 Nations to a close. England were crowned champions but were not able to top it with back to back grand slams. Over the last few weeks, I have been using the World Rugby Rankings to predict the outcome of the matches and now it is time to see how they performed.

6 Nations #5 – Who will win in 2017? – Week 5

March 13, 2017 By Nigel Marriott

After 3 more matches, world rugby has updated its ranking tables and I can now use these to look the prospects are for each team in the last round of the 2017 6 Nations. I have explained how the rankings work in an earlier 6 Nations post and it is worth reading that to understand how rankings can be a predictive tool. Based on the latest rankings, it looks like France and Scotland will end up in the top half of the final table alongside England who are already the 2017 6 Nations champions.

UK Weather Tracker #1 – February 2017

March 5, 2017 By Nigel Marriott

Welcome to the first of my monthly UK weather tracker posts! Every month I will update the charts to show how exceptional or not our weather has been for the last month as well as additional charts that explore our unpredictable weather in more detail. All data used in these posts come from the UK Met Office.

It is early March and outside my window, a cherry tree has started to bud. For my wife this is a welcome sign of spring and marks the end of her second full winter of living in Britain. To go from living in sunny Texas to the unpredictable UK takes some getting used to but as we all know, 2 seasons is not enough to experience the variety of weather that is possible in the UK. I can tell her that on average the average 24-hour temperature was 5 degrees Celsius across the UK this winter but she has no context to judge whether that is a warm or cool winter.

6 Nations #4 – Who will win in 2017? – week 4

March 1, 2017 By Nigel Marriott

Round 3 of the 6 Nations is over and we have 3 more games to discuss and dissect. More importantly, world rugby has updated its rankings and I can update my forecasts for round 4 based on these. I explained how the rankings work in my previous 6 Nations post and that is also worth reading to see how the forecast of round 4 now differs from then.

Looking back at that post, it was interesting how the rankings predicted a narrow win for Scotland over Wales. Given that Scotland had not beaten Wales for 10 years that was quite a call and in the event they won the game comfortably. Scotland’s reward is that they are up to #5 in the world rankings, 2 points behind Ireland.

With the updated rankings, here are my revised forecasts for round 4.

UK Opinion Poll Tracker #1 – February 2017

February 25, 2017 By Nigel Marriott

Welcome to my first post tracking what the opinion polls are saying in the UK. I will be updating this every month with my comments.

The first chart shows the monthly trends since May 2010. The lines are the opinion polls which are based on centred 9-poll rolling averages. For each month a vertical bar shows by how much the 9-poll average has varied in that month. The square blocks are the vote shares seen in General Elections, the circles are projected national shares from local elections. All data comes from UK Polling Report and Mark Pack’s database.

By-Elections #2 – Review of Copeland & Stoke Central predictions

February 24, 2017 By Nigel Marriott

The results are in and it is now time to review my predictions of the Copeland and Stoke-on-Trent Central by-elections. How well did my by-election model do and what lessons can be learnt? Let’s look at the numbers first.