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YOUR COMMENTS: SUMMER SERIES 2009
I remember being told in class one day a thing that has stuck in my mind ever since. When mention was made of statistics the instructor told us to: " ...always remember, STATISTICS are like bikinis : what they reveal is interesting, but what they hide is vital !!" I have never forgotten that description, and whenever I hear statistics being pumped out by whatever organisation I always feel they are hiding something vital. Graham Laughton
Blowing cold then hot
Perhaps you should have asked the Met Office about their global climate predictions for the last 9 years. 100% have been above the 50% confidence interval and 75% above the 75% probability limit. How likely is that? < 1 in 512? I love this arbitrary division of "short term noise" with "long term trend". Next time you have the chance, could you ask the Met Office whether they are aware of something called: "long term noise". There are many systems which exhibit noise which is greater with longer periods. This is called 1/f (or 1/(f^n)) noise, and it has the characteristic of having long term trends which are due to noise!!! As an example have a look at this website: http://www.tursiops.cc/fm/ and go down to the graph under "pink noise". Then look at the first half of the curve ... does it not look very very similar to the global warming curve? And could it be that there is a reason? If climate change is a type of 1/f noise, then then we would expect to large long term fluctuations ... ice ages?
Mike Haseler I understood from the programme that current climate models include oceanic and atmospheric effects, human, geological, biotic. But do they include levels of incoming solar radiation? Given that simple solar models predict that the earth will soon begin to cool, it is vital that models include this variable, or they will always be open to criticism.
Dr Anthony Wright I'm not a climate change denier but there are three non human inputs that no one mentions namely: 1. The rotation of the planet is slowing. The rate is very small but sooner or later this will have an effect on climate. 2. Plate tectonics. Around every 250 million years Earth's landmasses collide and form a super continent. To that end the American continent and Europe are getting further apart. Sooner or later the effect that the Atlantic conveyer (Gulf stream) has will change. 3. The moon is getting further away from us. This affects the tides that may well contribute to weather patterns.
Rick Pond
Alcohol brand recognition
As Vivienne's secretary in the late 1980s when she was head of BMA pensions, I can assure you that her knowledge of maths was, and is, as great as her knowledge of medicine!!
Jane Ford
Revenge of the nerds
The programme referred to Bill Gates dropping out of Harvard. This came up when Mr Gates was interviewed by David Dimbleby a few years ago. He said he hadn't dropped out he had taken leave of absence and could return to Harvard anytime. He did smile as he said it but doubtless the Harvard authorities would confirm his assertion.
Graham Golding
We can work it out
The notion that a piano was involved in the creation of this chord runs contrary to all known accounts of the instrumentation and recording techniques of George Martin and the band at this particular point in their career. Has Jason Brown, the More Or Less team, or indeed anybody at all, ever bothered to actually ask Paul, Ringo, or perhaps more pertinently, Sir George Martin about the truth of the matter?
Francis Vine It's an A11th (or G11 if you move a fret). You have to do a bar with your first finger, of course. I use to play it in the 1960s myself (yes I'm almost the proverbial 64 years of age). Any jazz guitarist would know. Fourier Transform is of course absolutely necessary for quantum mechanics, X-ray crystallography, infrared spectroscopy and just about every other analytical technique using waves - but guitar chords? Mmm - ask a jazz guitarist, it's easier.
Nina Hall
Junk maths
Until I recently read about this, I didn't realise this kind of stuff was commissioned so I always wondered why on earth universities would waste their time on stuff like this at the same time as moaning about funding. For anyone who doesn't know about this, they will likely be thinking universities are wasting funding calculating things like the best shopping day before Christmas. Not great PR for the scientific community really. Joanne Duff This is blurb spotted on the back of a Clarks guide to children's foot health and the importance of poorly fitted shoes. It says: "Did you know? Every time your child takes a step their heel strikes the floor with force equivalent to twice their body weight. So, during the course of a day, an average child's feet will carry the equivalent weight of just over 2 blue whales." Does this count as junk maths? Rob Abbott
Calculating copyright infringement
In your feature on "Calculating copyright infringement" you missed the assumption that everybody who uses file sharing software is *illegally* sharing files. That is not the case -- such file sharing software is commonly used for entirely legal purposes (for example, the official distribution for Sun Microsystems' popular OpenOffice.org software depends on such file sharing software). Again, this leads to an overestimate of the number of people illegally downloading files. Tim Rowe If the question posed was whether the respondent had used file sharing software, the results would not have estimated the level of illegal downloading. P2P networks are not illegal in themselves and those using them for nefarious purposes are only a subset of all users. Even the BBC used to use 'file sharing software' (Kontiki) in the iPlayer. Charles Quekett Regarding your item on copyright infringement, it seems to me that there is something invalid about the basic assumption that each of these people should be afforded equal weight in the derivation of the figures. Surely the person who downloads the odd song or film is statistically insignificant in comparison to the smaller number of serious, professional pirates who are downloading files in their thousands? It might also be of some relevance whether files are downloaded solely for personal use (= inevitably self-limiting), or are intended for wider distribution for profit. One way or the other, to quote a statistical figure based solely on a head count of ownership of software capable of downloading would seem to be both misleading and meaningless.Dr David Gasking
Light at the end of the tunnel
Your feature today on energy-saving light bulbs was interesting, but the question is whether I would save more energy by throwing out my incandescent bulbs and replacing them with energy-saving bulbs before the end of their life?Jon Mack I've used energy saving light bulbs for 20 years. Whilst the price per bulb has come down over that time, bulbs I've bought recently seem to fail much sooner - nothing like the stated average life. This means I have to take the bulbs to a particular recycling site due to their composition. Has anyone tested whether the average life claim is still true?Peter Templeton I have a 7 watt bulb in my house that I bought when my first grandchild was a baby so that I could leave the landing light on all night for him without sending my electricity bill through the roof! It is still working and is switched on at least once every day and often gets left on all night. I think these bulbs are marvellous and have them all over the house now. Shirley Williams You said that a CFL light bulb had 16 times the life of an incandescent one, but no mention was given of where this statistical figure had come from. Last year I purchased seven CFL bulbs and three of them have already had to be replaced - on the other hand I have one 40 watt incandescent bulb that is nearly fifty years old. The extra energy of incandescent bulbs in domestic rooms is not lost as it helps to heat up the room quite efficiently, keeping any heating thermostat off for longer and hence reducing heating energy in compensation.Anthony Harrison
State of the statistical nation
Why is it that statisticians refer to numbers such as national debt figures as xxx number of pounds per each person. I don't have any debt and I cannot believe I am the only person in the country with no debt. Lyndon Antle I listened to your recent interview with Jill Matheson, the incoming chief of the ONS. I thought you asked some important questions about the credibility of the ONS, but felt that she seemed to be in a state of denial. I would say she has some work to do to re-establish the ONS as a credible source for national statistics but seems to be oblivious of the challenges she faces. As a member of the public I have tried to make use of the ONS website to verify claims made by politicians and I came away disappointed. Not only are all the published statistics highly aggregated but they are not readily available in machine-readable formats. I found it very hard to even validate the data that was being presented and was not very happy about the way it was classified. GDP statistics are not broken down by industry for example, but in a wholly useless way by function (agriculture, business services, mining etc.) But what is really missing is any way of validating the statistics in the first place. What Ms Matheson must realise is that the days when we could take government departments at their word are long gone, and some way of comparing data for internal consistency and correctness is essential. This has absolutely nothing to do with anything that might be called the British 'character'. It is a basic principle of the scientific method. Christopher Tipper
Why does England lose?
The analysis of football "statistics" appears to me to be flawed as football is partly skill and partly chance. Think of the team that does not win but hits the goal-posts several times. The analysis quoted on the programme did not appear to take into account the element of "luck" that there is in football. Arthur Boon I was astonished to hear the item about the England football team's qualifying records. The contributor stated that the record of the team that qualified for the 1990 World Cup was "exactly the same" as that which failed to qualify for the 2008 European Championships. This is blatantly untrue! The 1990 team had a record of 3 wins, 3 draws and no defeats. As you only got two points for a win back then, that gave them 9 points in total out of a possible 12 - a percentage of 75%. The 2008 team had a record of 7 wins, 2 draws and 3 defeats. Using two points for a win this would have given them 16 points out of a possible 24 - a percentage of 66.67% and clearly inferior. If you use the three points for a win system that was utilised for the 2008 qualifiers, the percentages are closer : 66.67% for the 1990 team and 63.89% for the 2008 team. Whichever method you use, the 1990 team has the better record. Matthew Hill
Funny signs and discounts
I have a photo of an in-store sign at Lidl, offering low energy lightbulbs. "1 pack 49p" (Pack meaning 1 bulb) and next to that "5 for 40p - you save £2.05" Surely it means 40p EACH if 5 are bought: saving 45p? No; it really was 1 bulb for 49p or 5 bulbs for a total of 40p! Andrew Currie I went shopping in Asda on Saturday and at the check out I noticed that they charged me £1.25 for a bottle of chilli sauce and yet I was sure that there was a label on the shelf stating it was a £1. I went back to the shelf to check and noticed it said 2 bottles for £1- one bottle for £1.25. I went to Customer service with another bottle and received my 25p refund!Sheila Treacy
Understanding Rape Statistics
My view is that rather than encourage the reporting of rape, the unique way the published rape stats are calculated would discourage reporting of attacks. If victims feel that after the attack and the necessary physically and emotionally invasive investigations, they have a less than 5% chance of finding justice they may well decide not to inform the Police whereas a 46% chance (if calculated consistently with all other crime figures) may well encourage reporting. Ian Ford Why, when statistics regarding rape convictions are discussed, is it assumed that those figures indicate that a high proportion of rapists are escaping convictions, when surely, the high proportion of allegations of rape which result in no conviction might be interpreted differently - that in fact, there may be a disproportionate number of false allegations? Steve
Graduate salaries
By definition, lifetime earnings can only be assessed at the end of a life. Therefore the people whose earnings are being used for assessments are those who took their degrees long ago, in an entirely different employment world. Nowadays, when many graduates may face years or lifetimes either unemployed or stacking shelves, it must be preposterous to assume the same earnings premium enjoyed by their grandparents' generation. Michael Oyle, Ireland Your statistics seem to take no account of the graduate debt, likely to be £20,000 - £30,000. This means that the non-graduate has an opportunity for a settled career and lifestyle while the graduate is still repaying this debt. Terence Neal In the 21st Century there are very few young people with good A-levels who do not go on to higher education. By definition they are untypical and therefore do not provide a good basis to estimate what graduates would have earned had they not gone to university. With respect to the variation by subject the comparisons are made with the same A-level qualifiers who do not go to university. As if the A-level qualifier who would have done maths had he or she gone to university were the same as the A-level qualifier who would have done Art. The comparisons of the premium between universities do not require comparisons with A-level qualifiers, and there are studies that try to compare them. The problem here is that for contrasting institutions the numbers of similar students are very small. They are small enough to be data errors. John Thompson The item on graduate salary premium did not cover one relevant point. Presumably the figures quoted extrapolate from a number of past years when the proportion of graduates was far smaller. As we get close to 50% of the cohort, what is the premium likely to be? Gordon Graham
Meta Analysis
I have worked as a scientist and have peer reviewed on a number of occasions. To do it properly is a very onerous task and from my experience, the standard of submissions was mostly poor and on occasion possibly fraudulent. The pressure to publish, the explosion of journals and the cut-throat nature of academia results in a number of questionable practices. Having worked in science, I treat most published work with suspicion until proved otherwise. Name withheld
Data art
In Britain we do not need 'data artists' to visualise data in order to understand it or use it in creating patterns. This is because we have geographers. Geography is not a taught subject in USA schools so maybe they have lost out on spatial perception. Both the air traffic over the States and Napoleon's journey to and from Moscow are varieties of flow line mapping that can be based on satellite images of the earth or more conventional base maps. Perhaps you can devote part of a programme to the increasingly important statistical mapping element of geography. Angela Bailey How can you possibly have covered data/art without mentioning Processing? It's what Aaron Koblin used to make the images that he created of the flight patterns. Chris Lynas I have not seen this realised but the first instance of the concept that I know of was in Douglas Adams's "Dirk Gentley's Holistic Detective Agency" written about 15-years ago. Are the mathematicians still having to play catch-up with the artist philosophers? Richard Mullen
Ashes statistics
I was fascinated by your piece on the Ashes yesterday. I worked as a statistician for many years and I had got so irritated by the claim that somehow Australia had statistically "won" the Ashes that quite independently I had removed the results for the first test and shown, like your piece that the performances were broadly equal after that, with Broad featuring near the top for both bowling and batting - the commentators had wanted him dropped!Michael Stock
A levels examined
Just because the students are getting higher grades doesn't make it easier to get to university. One of my daughters is looking at universities to do a very similar subject to that which I did in 1984. In 1981 I received a B,C & D in my A levels and was easily able to gain a place at Sheffield Uni to study Physiology and Zoology. My daughter is going to need an A and 2Bs to do the same course to start in 2010. My daughters deserve the grades they obtained and I know that they are certainly more applied, organised and better motivated than I was at 17! Teresa Hughes For many years until recently I was an adviser to students in schools and colleges, particularly in relation to A level subject choices and eventual progression to university. Up until the late 1990s maths was quite a popular option for students. Generally welcome changes to GCSE Maths then put the focus on the students' ability to apply mathematics in the real world. However, this reduced the connection between skills needed for GCSE success and those needed to succeed at A level, which must quite rightly meet the needs of universities, particularly in Pure Maths. When this happened, students who had achieved even A grades at GCSE sometimes found themselves struggling with A level. As a result, teachers and advisers were careful to suggest that only the most 'mathemetically minded' (however academically able) took up the subject at A level. As a result, it is perhaps unsurprising that students who take A level maths are likely to be more successful than they were in the past. Jackie Powell Why does no-one mention the bell-shaped curve of normal distribution? As a student of education back in the 70s/80s in the USA, one course on the setting and grading of tests emphasised this curve as an indicator of the validity of a test for a given group. If the test is appropriate for the group very few will fail, very few achieve A grades and the majority will achieve a middle grade of C. Any kind of skew toward the top or bottom end indicates a test too easy or too hard for the group. Clearly A-level exam results are no longer a good indicator of ability. Maureen Ille
Financial WMD
While your US contributor may have had a firm grasp of the constituents needed to achieve 'success', it's obvious she, and certainly those charged with overseeing the process, didn't appreciate the effect if this were to be applied by those with only the bottom line bonus in mind. Gordon Petherbridge Derivatives are manufactured, mostly by banks. If they can sell them, they may make a profit. Intermediaries can also profit from various forms of handling fees. But how can the ultimate purchaser ever receive a benefit? Given their complexity, no-one (on the basis of the last two years' experience) can price the risk. So why do regulators not ban their sale? Jimmy Adams
Who governs Britain?
UKIP claim we pay the EU £19billion per annum. Although the loss of the value of the pound makes it difficult to be exact but I estimate we pay the EU about £3billion net. UKIP never states that we get most of our money back. In addition. we can apply to the EU for help for all sorts of projects. Bill Coughlan
Non verbal communication
Thanks for another interesting episode of More Or Less. Having heard the piece about the "93% of communication is body-language" statistic, I went to check
Wikipedia
and found the statistic happily sitting there right in the opening sentences of the article. I've now tweaked that article to try and make it clearer that this is a misunderstanding... Dan Stowell Thank you for the article about the percentage of communication that is non-verbal. As someone who lives and works with people with autism this statistic is frequently (and depressingly) used. It was very interesting (and quite relieving) to hear from the man whose research had come up with this figure. I have never thought to question where this figure came from as it is so widely used and by some very respected academics who research autism. So it's not just a figure repeated by management types but also has been used as the starting point for many research projects, resulting in many papers and books. Thanks again! Rachel Officer
Footballing stats
I listened with interest to this week's short interview with Professor David Spiegelhalter and read his article on your site: http://tinyurl.com/r2hlt3 I thought it would be interesting to see to what extent I could recreate his work with a simple spreadsheet (which the article suggested would be easy) and set about gathering the last year's premier league data. However, I immediately found that the very first statistic quoted in the article - that the average number of goals scored by a Premier League team at home last season was 1.36 - differs from my own calculations which show that at the time that article was published (id est with one week of premier league fixtures left to play) the average number of home goals was 1.40 (518 home goals having been scored in 370 games). Am I missing something blindingly obvious or was there an error in the article? I'm also sceptical about the subsequent claim that Arsenal had scored 39% above average at home - by my calcs it was just 4%. Nick Weller, China
Pensions
In your article about pensions, you gave a comparison of the UK pension with the average European pension. Surely, of more relevance to UK pensioners is the fraction of our pensions compared with the average national wage (across the EU). Of course, related to this is the level of national taxation (again, across the EU). Frank Matthews
Debunking a YouTube hit
I would like to really thank you for the precise and clear job you've done to counter the manipulation of the "muslim demographic" video. The video has been seen 10 million times on You Tube . But when you perform a search on the google video engine, the video is in fact replicated on many sites. Unfortunately, on the google video search, "muslim demographic : the truth" only comes up today on page 3. As we all know, very few internet users will reach that page...I will personally share your video with a large extent of my contacts. Let's hope the "more or less" video can soon come on page 1 in internet search engines. Vincent Placer, France For a video which isn't even able to correctly quote the number of EU member states, is it really a surprise that the rest of the mindless propaganda is wholly inaccurate? Peter Mayne I agreed wholeheartedly with your piece yesterday about the wild claims of some regarding the Islamification of the UK and I applaud your bravery in dealing with the otherwise taboo subject. Whilst I agreed with your debunking of some absurd assumptions there were also some assumptions in your own case that might be questioned. The idea that migrating populations adopt fertility patterns of hosting populations is not universal. Where religious groups are concerned it is in fact clear that they carry with them their traditional fertility patterns. As an example, the Catholic pattern is very similar the world over and does not tend to the norm of any containing population. Where a migrating group is closely knit by language, faith culture etc. the tendency is to remain separate and not to trend towards the norm in any medium term timescale. Paul J. Weighell
The Pythagorean comma
You told the story of Pythagoras passing a smithy and hearing the different pitches from the different hammers and anvils, in nice integer ratios. It's a nice story, but anyone who has wielded a hammer in this way will recognise that it is just a story. There is no simple relationship between the size of a solid object and the nominal pitch it produces when struck. As well, the overtones are almost guaranteed to be markedly non-integer multiples of the fundamental frequency. Pythagoras would have gained no insight into the numerical relationships between the tones from looking at the sizes or weights of the hammers or anvils. As an example, bell makers have go to some considerable lengths to design a shape for the bell which has approximately integer ratios for the first few overtones at least. This has to be worked at - it is certainly not a self evident consequence of the bell's shape. Scott Campbell, New Zealand Having long considered mathematics merely a convenient human construct capable of proving/disproving virtually any concept, particularly when used to formulate statistics, today's programme went some way to confirming this regarding suspect musical notation, where the object appears to count the notes accurately rather than sitting back and enjoying a performance, wrong notes and all, indicating that mathematicians should get out more. Gordon Petherbridge I would like to congratulate you on your excellent report on numbers and music in relation to keyboard instruments. I was waiting with baited breath for the usual misconceptions to be trotted out and they weren't. You didn't even repeat that oft quoted misconception that Bach composed his 40 Preludes and Fugues to demonstrate equal temperament. John Pike Mander
DNA to stay?
The item about the misuse of statistics by the police, in their attempts to justify retention of the DNA of innocent people was more about the misuse of language than the misuse of statistics: confusing "rearrest" and "reoffending," for example, or by assuming arrest means guilt. This is a confusion of definition which then seems to lead to the statistical conclusion the police seem to want. I have no idea whether this is deliberate on their part, but it certainly isn't a problem of their misinterpretation of statistics, just of their native language! Sara Neill In all the discussions regarding the police DNA data base including yours, just now, the tacit assumption seems to be made that anyone not convicted is therefore innocent. Wrong wrong wrong! All you can say is that the evidence produced has not convinced the public prosecutor or the jury. Clearly an important part of gathering evidence for a re-trial will be the DNA file. To my mind, therefore, there is no motive for ceasing to hold this evidence (under proper control) and every motive to do so. The statistics of reconviction do not affect this argument. The statistics of re-arrest may well be more relevant where the arrested is skilled at concealing evidence. Paul Cope What are the odds of an incorrect match occuring on the database in someone's life time? Each year younger and younger people are put on the database so that someone may well be on it for over 65 years. Now knowing how many times the database is searched each year proivides a start for estimating the answer to this question. However it is important also to take account of the fact in the future as DNA detection becomes easier and cheaper more and more searches will be done (perhaps in 50 years in may increase 50 or 100 or even 1000 fold as DNA replaces figure printing etc.). Mr M Watkins
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