An independent statistician using data to understand our world and to predict the future
The 2024 Six Nations (Men’s) ended with Ireland just missing out on a 2nd successive Grand Slam due to a last minute drop goal. Italy recorded their best ever 6 Nations and left Wales with the wooden spoon for the 2nd time ever. France, England and Scotland recorded plusses and minuses during their campaigns and all 3 nations will be seeking to go one better in 2025.
[Read more…] about 6 Nations History #4 – The men’s story so far in 2024
Winter 2024 in the UK was the 5th sunniest & 8th wettest on record. A year ago I postulated UK winters were entering a new era of being warm, wet & sunny. I am now certain this is the case and my favoured hypothesis is that our winters are following a steady trend which began in the early 1980s.
Did you enjoy the 2nd warmest February on record? Probably not as you may have been dealing with the 8th wettest February on record in the UK instead which in the South was actually the wettest on record.
[Read more…] about UK Weather Tracker #85 – February 2024
Labour is on course for a crushing landslide later this year… or are they? Many parallels with 1997 are being drawn at the moment but it’s too early to be making detailed forecasts. Instead, I want to lay the foundations for my election forecast
later this year by looking at what 100 years of UK electoral history is telling me. I tell this story by assigning probabilities to 10 specific outcomes of interest and finish by explaining why 2024 is more likely to be a repeat of 2001 than 1997.
I remind you I was deemed the most accurate forecaster of the 2019 general election. This article is the first in what I hope will be a series of articles which lead me to hold on to that accolade!
[Read more…] about UK General Election 2024 #1 – Going beyond the swing
In July 2023, the UK government’s finally published its response to its 2018 consultation on whether #ethnicity #paygap #reporting should be made mandatory for UK employers. A number of paragraphs from this response were quoted in an article published at the time in The Voice newspaper.
I want to go through two of those paragraphs because they highlight what is wrong with the current debate. I think the debate can be reset in a more productive direction if campaigners and the government were to focus on Action 71 of the Inclusive Britain action plan instead of Action 16. In short, those who wish to implement mandatory ethnicity pay gap reporting should use existing Disability Confident reporting scheme as a template to build on and not copy and paste Gender Pay Gap Reporting.
Did you enjoy the 6th sunniest January on record? Probably not as you may have been dealing with the 9th stormiest January on record in the UK instead.
[Read more…] about UK Weather Tracker #84 – January 2024
The 2023 calendar year was the 2nd hottest year on record in the UK just behind the hottest year ever in 2022. Last year, I showed how a technique known as a Control Chart could be used to decide if the UK is now in a new warming trend and after adding 2023, my answer is now “a step change upwards has taken place but the pace of change is not yet clear“.
[Read more…] about UK Weather Trends #29 – Annual Temperatures in 2023
The 2024 meteorological year began with a warm, wet, dark & stormy December that combine to create the 4th most abnormal December on record.
[Read more…] about UK Weather Tracker #83 – December 2023
In November 2023, the Office of National Statistics (ONS) resumed publishing estimates of the UK Ethnicity Pay Gap after a 3 year hiatus for the Covid19 pandemic. I have organised this data into a user-friendly (hopefully!) Microsoft Excel spreadsheet which allows you to see how the median hourly pay has changed between 2012 & 2022 for a variety of ethnicities & other categories. This article explains how you can use this spreadsheet and why you must look at ethnicity pay gap data in a different way than you would for gender pay gap data.
[Read more…] about Pay Gap Trends #7 – UK Ethnicity Pay Gap 2012 to 2022
The UK autumn in 2023 was the 6th warmest on record and consistent with the step change in autumnal climate seen 25 years ago.
