Nigel Marriott's Blog

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

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6 Nations #3 – Who will win in 2017? – week 3

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So the 6 Nations is underway again and the traditional rivalries are reheated. Who will win is once again on all the sports pages and there are no shortages of pundits willing to give their opinions. If you want a different way to predict what will happen, why not use the World Rugby Rankings?

Ranking tables play a big part in a number of sports but they are not widely understood among sports fans. At bottom though, rankings are intended to be used as a predictive tool for what will happen in a match. A good ranking system will be more accurate in predicting outcomes than a bad ranking system. However, a perfect ranking system is something we don’t want otherwise sport becomes boring as we will always know the outcome in advance. So as a forecasting tool, a ranking system is a curious beast. We want it to be good but not great.

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UK General Election 2015 #2 – What would the result have been using the d’Hondt election system?

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The 2015 General Election surprised many people when the Conservatives unexpectedly won a small majority though I should blow my own trumpet and say it wasn’t quite a surprise for me!  One thing that wasn’t a surprise were complaints about the perceived unfairness of the First Past The Post election system with UKIP joining the Lib Dems with their criticisms.

Using the election results, I decided to see how the results would differ if a different election system had been used.  The system I decided to explore was the d’Hondt system which is one of the most common PR systems in use and is used by the UK in EU elections.

The results of my analysis was published in the Significance magazine and you can see what I wrote in my article “A very different result“.

There are of course other election systems and I plan to write other posts looking at what the results might have been using those.

 

EU Referendum 2016 #1 – How and why did Leave win and what does it mean for UK politics? (a 4-part special)

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I am delighted to announce my 4-part series describing my analysis of the EU referendum results is now complete and available on Youtube. The full list of the clips are:

Part 1 – Where and How did Leave win?

Part 2 – Why did Leave win?

Part 3 – What does the leave vote mean for the next general election?

Part 4 – How will Brexit play out in the Richmond & Sleaford by-elections

I have analysed the results of the EU referendum in some depth and I hope you find my insights informative. Some specific highlights are:

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UK General Election 2015 #1 – My Forecast

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In two days time, the results of the 2015 General Election will be in. Will there be another coalition? Will Labour get in? What about the SNP in Scotland? You can now see my forecast of the 2015 General Election presented as a YouTube clip and discover many interesting facts about elections in Britain.

The bottom line is that the polls will be wrong and the pundits will be caught by surprise!