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New content for GCSE Maths announced

Following the consultation discussed previously on this blog, the Department for Education has announced the revised content for GCSE Mathematics.read more...

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Complaint about the Press Complaints Commission

What a strange organisation the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) is. They say that a press article is inaccurate, but consider it reasonable that the inaccurate headline remains uncorrected.read more...

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PISA statistical methods - more detailed comments

In the Radio 4 documentary PISA - Global Education Tables Tested, broadcast on November 25th, a comment is made that the statistical issues are a bit complex to go into. Here is a brief summary of my...

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How surprising was the cluster of cycle deaths in London?

More or Less recently featured Jody Aberdein talking about the cluster of 6 cycle deaths in London over a 2 week period. read more...

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More deaths due to climate change? Or maybe not.

Coverage of a paper just published by Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health included dramatic headlines such as the Guardian's Heat-related deaths will rise 257% by 2050 because of climate...

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It's cherry-picking time: more poorly reported science being peddled to...

Today the Daily Mail trumpeted “For every hour of screen time, the risk of family life being disrupted and children having poorer emotional wellbeing may be doubled”, while the Daily Telegraph said...

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A heuristic for sorting science stories in the news

Dominic Lawson's article in the Sunday Times today[paywall] quotes me as having the rather cynical heuristic: "the very fact that a piece of health research appears in the papers indicates that it is...

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Numbers and the common-sense bypass

Yesterday the Sunday Times [paywall] covered a talk Anne Johnson and I had given at the Cheltenham Science Festival about the statistics of sex, and the article said read more...

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Using metrics to assess research quality

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) is carrying out an independent review of the role of metrics in research assessment, and are encouraging views. I have submitted a (very...

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Another tragic cluster - but how surprised should we be?

Sadly another passenger plane crashed yesterday - the third in 8 days, the Air Algerie flight on July 24th, the TransAsia flight in Taiwan on July 23rd, and Malaysian Airlines in Ukraine on July 17th....

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Using expected frequencies when teaching probability

The July 2014 Mathematics Programmes of Study: Key Stage 4 (GCSE) specifies under Probability read more...

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What's the most likely age to die?

It’s all very well telling someone their life expectancy but this does not communicate the variability around that central value. But the life tables published by the Office for National Statistics...

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Is prostitution really worth £5.7 billion a year?

The EU has demanded rapid payment of £1.7 billion from the UK because our economy has done better than predicted, and some of this is due to the prostitution market now being considered as part of our...

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Sub-editing in the Times

A story in monday's Times had the following dramatic headline:read more...

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Luck and Cancer

I was on Radio PM and BBC News Channel yesterday discussing the study published in Science " Variation in cancer risk among tissues can be explained by the number of stem cell divisions ". This had...

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How many hours of life did Obama lose in Delhi?

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Misleading conclusions from alcohol protection study

The Daily Mail today declared that "Drinking is only good for you if you are a woman over 65", while the Times trumpeted that "Alcohol has no health benefits after all".read more...

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Sensationalist promotion by the World Cancer Research Fund

Today the Daily Telegraph featured the powerful headline "Just three alcoholic drinks a day can cause liver cancer, warns new study" , based on a press release from the World Cancer Research Fund...

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Was anyone right about the pre-election polls?

There has been much wailing and gnashing of blogs since the dismal performance of the pre-election polls last week. These had confidently and consistently predicted a rough tie in vote-share between...

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Why live interviews are a particular challenge for statisticians.

I like doing live interviews for radio or TV – it’s exciting and they can’t edit what you say. The programme is almost inevitably running late, so last Saturday morning when I did an interview...

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