RSS International Conference for All Statisticians and Users of Data
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Royal Statistical Scandal
Royal Statistical Scandal False and misleading claims by the Royal Statistical Society Including on human poverty and UN global goals Documentary evidence Matt Berkley Draft 27 June 2019 1 "The Code also requires us to be competent. ... We must also know our limits and not go beyond what we know.... John Pullinger RSS President" https://www.statslife.org.uk/news/3338-rss-publishes-revised-code-of- conduct "If the Royal Statistical Society cannot provide reasonable evidence on inflation faced by poor people, changing needs, assets or debts from 2008 to 2018, I propose that it retract the honour and that the President makes a statement while he holds office." Matt Berkley 27 Dec 2018 2 "a recent World Bank study showed that nearly half of low-and middle- income countries had insufficient data to monitor poverty rates (2002- 2011)." Royal Statistical Society news item 2015 1 "Max Roser from Oxford points out that newspapers could have legitimately run the headline ' Number of people in extreme poverty fell by 137,000 since yesterday' every single day for the past 25 years... Careless statistical reporting could cost lives." President of the Royal Statistical Society Lecture to the Independent Press Standards Organisation April 2018 2 1 https://www.statslife.org.uk/news/2495-global-partnership-for- sustainable-development-data-launches-at-un-summit 2 https://www.statslife.org.uk/features/3790-risk-statistics-and-the-media 3 "Mistaken or malicious misinformation can change your world... When the government is wrong about you it will hurt you too but you may never know how. -
The Role of the ADRN Governing Board, David Hand
The Role of the ADRN Governing Board Professor David Hand Chair of the Administrative Data Research Network Board 1 Responses to the ADTF recommendation to establish a UK Governing Board to provide the governance structure for the ADRCs Government Response (14 June 2013) “The Government supports the principle of the Governing Board reporting to Parliament via an independent body ... we agree that the UK Statistics Authority could be well placed to provide appropriate oversight.” UK Statistics Authority Response (12 November 2013) “… the Board of the Statistics Authority discussed the extent of progress in establishing the Administrative Data Research Network and … formally agreed to proposals for the Authority’s governance role in relation to the ADRN ...” 2 Key functions of the Governing Board: R1.8: Strategy • Leadership • Guidance on ethical standards, international experience, methodology, security, legal aspects, etc • Enablement • Project approvals panel includes a Board member • Encourage collaboration across the ADRCs R1.9: Accountability • Report annually to UKSA on • Performance of the ADRN • Governance of the ADRN 3 Further recommendations: R1.10 “An important part of the work of the ADRCs will be to” • Monitor legality, viability, and technical feasibility of proposals • Ensure research skills • The ADS acting as a portal to the network (the “Information Gateway”) R1.11 • “At an early stage, [the Board should] investigate guidelines for access and linkage by private sector interests, as well as commissioning public engagement -
Minutes of the 31 Meeting of the GSS Methodology Advisory Committee
Minutes of the 31st Meeting of the GSS Methodology Advisory Committee 24th May 2016 Drummond Gate, London Hosted by the Office for National Statistics 1 GSS MAC 31 Minutes Contents 1.0 List of Attendees .......................................................................................................... 3 2.0 Administration .............................................................................................................. 5 2.1 ONS and GSS news ................................................................................................ 5 2.2 Methodology news ................................................................................................... 5 2.3 Minutes and progress from GSS MAC 30 ................................................................ 5 3.0 Papers presented ........................................................................................................ 6 3.1 Paper 1: Developing an approach to addressing potential discontinuities in the new National Survey for Wales .............................................................................................. 6 3.2 Paper 2: 2021 Census Coverage Adjustment Methodology ..................................... 9 4.0 Project updates.......................................................................................................... 12 4.1 Plans for use of administrative data ....................................................................... 12 4.2 Update on Big Data and Classifying web scraped data using machine learning .... -
September 2010
THE ISBA BULLETIN Vol. 17 No. 3 September 2010 The official bulletin of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis AMESSAGE FROM THE membership renewal (there will be special provi- PRESIDENT sions for members who hold multi-year member- ships). Peter Muller¨ The Bayesian Nonparametrics Section (IS- ISBA President, 2010 BA/BNP) is already up and running, and plan- [email protected] ning the 2011 BNP workshop. Please see the News from the World section in this Bulletin First some sad news. In August we lost two and our homepage (select “business” and “mee- big Bayesians. Julian Besag passed away on Au- tings”). gust 6, and Arnold Zellner passed away on Au- gust 11. Arnold was one of the founding ISBA ISBA/SBSS Educational Initiative. Jointly presidents and was instrumental to get Bayesian with ASA/SBSS (American Statistical Associa- started. Obituaries on this issue of the Analysis tion, Section on Bayesian Statistical Science) we Bulletin and on our homepage acknowledge Juli- launched a new joint educational initiative. The an and Arnold’s pathbreaking contributions and initiative formalized a long standing history of their impact on the lives of many people in our collaboration of ISBA and ASA/SBSS in related research community. They will be missed dearly! matters. Continued on page 2. ISBA Elections 2010. Please check out the elec- tion statements of the candidates for the upco- In this issue ming ISBA elections. We have an amazing slate ‰ A MESSAGE FROM THE BA EDITOR of candidates. Thanks to the nominating commit- *Page 2 tee, Mike West (chair), Renato Martins Assuncao,˜ Jennifer Hill, Beatrix Jones, Jaeyong Lee, Yasuhi- ‰ 2010 ISBA ELECTION *Page 3 ro Omori and Gareth Robert! ‰ SAVAGE AWARD AND MITCHELL PRIZE 2010 *Page 8 Sections. -
IMS Bulletin 39(4)
Volume 39 • Issue 4 IMS1935–2010 Bulletin May 2010 Meet the 2010 candidates Contents 1 IMS Elections 2–3 Members’ News: new ISI members; Adrian Raftery; It’s time for the 2010 IMS elections, and Richard Smith; we introduce this year’s nominees who are IMS Collections vol 5 standing for IMS President-Elect and for IMS Council. You can read all the candi- 4 IMS Election candidates dates’ statements, starting on page 4. 9 Amendments to This year there are also amendments Constitution and Bylaws to the Constitution and Bylaws to vote Letter to the Editor 11 on: they are listed The candidate for IMS President-Elect is Medallion Preview: Laurens on page 9. 13 Ruth Williams de Haan Voting is open until June 26, so 14 COPSS Fisher lecture: Bruce https://secure.imstat.org/secure/vote2010/vote2010.asp Lindsay please visit to cast your vote! 15 Rick’s Ramblings: March Madness 16 Terence’s Stuff: And ANOVA thing 17 IMS meetings 27 Other meetings 30 Employment Opportunities 31 International Calendar of Statistical Events The ten Council candidates, clockwise from top left, are: 35 Information for Advertisers Krzysztof Burdzy, Francisco Cribari-Neto, Arnoldo Frigessi, Peter Kim, Steve Lalley, Neal Madras, Gennady Samorodnitsky, Ingrid Van Keilegom, Yazhen Wang and Wing H Wong Abstract submission deadline extended to April 30 IMS Bulletin 2 . IMs Bulletin Volume 39 . Issue 4 Volume 39 • Issue 4 May 2010 IMS members’ news ISSN 1544-1881 International Statistical Institute elects new members Contact information Among the 54 new elected ISI members are several IMS members. We congratulate IMS IMS Bulletin Editor: Xuming He Fellow Jon Wellner, and IMS members: Subhabrata Chakraborti, USA; Liliana Forzani, Assistant Editor: Tati Howell Argentina; Ronald D. -
Statistics Making an Impact
John Pullinger J. R. Statist. Soc. A (2013) 176, Part 4, pp. 819–839 Statistics making an impact John Pullinger House of Commons Library, London, UK [The address of the President, delivered to The Royal Statistical Society on Wednesday, June 26th, 2013] Summary. Statistics provides a special kind of understanding that enables well-informed deci- sions. As citizens and consumers we are faced with an array of choices. Statistics can help us to choose well. Our statistical brains need to be nurtured: we can all learn and practise some simple rules of statistical thinking. To understand how statistics can play a bigger part in our lives today we can draw inspiration from the founders of the Royal Statistical Society. Although in today’s world the information landscape is confused, there is an opportunity for statistics that is there to be seized.This calls for us to celebrate the discipline of statistics, to show confidence in our profession, to use statistics in the public interest and to champion statistical education. The Royal Statistical Society has a vital role to play. Keywords: Chartered Statistician; Citizenship; Economic growth; Evidence; ‘getstats’; Justice; Open data; Public good; The state; Wise choices 1. Introduction Dictionaries trace the source of the word statistics from the Latin ‘status’, the state, to the Italian ‘statista’, one skilled in statecraft, and on to the German ‘Statistik’, the science dealing with data about the condition of a state or community. The Oxford English Dictionary brings ‘statistics’ into English in 1787. Florence Nightingale held that ‘the thoughts and purpose of the Deity are only to be discovered by the statistical study of natural phenomena:::the application of the results of such study [is] the religious duty of man’ (Pearson, 1924). -
Does the Bbc Help Cultivate a Pro-Gmo Agenda in the Uk?
DOES THE BBC HELP CULTIVATE A PRO-GMO AGENDA IN THE UK? Results of an open survey, June 8-13, 2015 Beyond GM, London www.beyond-gm.org EXECUTIVE SUMMARY A recent BBC Panorama programme, entitled GM Food – Cultivating Fear, suggested that opposition to GMOs is “morally unacceptable” and that those who oppose GMOs are prone to “making things up” instead of relying on facts and sound science. In the days following the programme there was considerable criticism about its narrative and the way that it framed the issues in support of a particular and partial point of view. It was in this context that Beyond GM endeavoured to provide a space, however limited, for broader public comment by undertaking a survey and gathering comments which explores the views of an informed public. At the heart of this enquiry were some very basic questions: Does the BBC help cultivate a pro-GM agenda in the UK? and How adequately and respectfully are public concerns about genetic modification in food and farming represented by the BBC? The survey was conducted online between 8th and 13th June 2015. There were 1000 respondents; 49.3% men and 50.6% women, and with an age spread typical of that of the UK as a whole. Respondents were made up of individuals from both sides of the GMO debate and represented a spectrum from those who believe that GMOs are necessary and beneficial to those who believe that GMOs are unnecessary and risky. Within this spectrum there was also a ‘middle ground’; those who felt GMOs were either ‘potentially beneficial’ or ‘potentially harmful’. -
Tea: a High-Level Language and Runtime System for Automating
Tea: A High-level Language and Runtime System for Automating Statistical Analysis Eunice Jun1, Maureen Daum1, Jared Roesch1, Sarah Chasins2, Emery Berger34, Rene Just1, Katharina Reinecke1 1University of Washington, 2University of California, 3University of Seattle, WA Berkeley, CA Massachusetts Amherst, femjun, mdaum, jroesch, [email protected] 4Microsoft Research, rjust, [email protected] Redmond, WA [email protected] ABSTRACT Since the development of modern statistical methods (e.g., Though statistical analyses are centered on research questions Student’s t-test, ANOVA, etc.), statisticians have acknowl- and hypotheses, current statistical analysis tools are not. Users edged the difficulty of identifying which statistical tests people must first translate their hypotheses into specific statistical should use to answer their specific research questions. Almost tests and then perform API calls with functions and parame- a century later, choosing appropriate statistical tests for eval- ters. To do so accurately requires that users have statistical uating a hypothesis remains a challenge. As a consequence, expertise. To lower this barrier to valid, replicable statistical errors in statistical analyses are common [26], especially given analysis, we introduce Tea, a high-level declarative language that data analysis has become a common task for people with and runtime system. In Tea, users express their study de- little to no statistical expertise. sign, any parametric assumptions, and their hypotheses. Tea A wide variety of tools (such as SPSS [55], SAS [54], and compiles these high-level specifications into a constraint satis- JMP [52]), programming languages (e.g., R [53]), and libraries faction problem that determines the set of valid statistical tests (including numpy [40], scipy [23], and statsmodels [45]), en- and then executes them to test the hypothesis. -
Honorary Graduates 2017
Graduation ceremonies 20 and 21 January 2017 The honorary Graduands The Honorary Graduands Every year the University of Sally Wainwright York confers the honorary Sally Wainwright is a BAFTA-winning screenwriter, executive producer and director, best known for creating degree of Doctor of the the BBC’s Happy Valley and Last Tango in Halifax and ITV’s University honoris causa Scott and Bailey. on distinguished people. Born in Huddersfield in 1963, Sally Wainwright grew up in The recipients come from Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire, before studying English at the University of York. After graduation she took a play many walks of life and all she wrote as a student to the Edinburgh Festival, where have made a significant she acquired an agent. BAFTA/Richard Kendal BAFTA/Richard contribution to society. After writing for the BBC Radio 4 series The Archers, Sally Wainwright became a scriptwriter for Coronation Street from 1994 to 1999, before Honorary graduands are creating the TV series At Home with the Braithwaites in 2000. Awarded the Royal selected from nominations Television Society’s Writer of the Year in 2009 for the drama Unforgiven, in 2011 she wrote Scott and Bailey, followed by Last Tango in Halifax, which won the BAFTA by members of the University for best series and best writer in 2012. and very often have links with The BBC crime drama Happy Valley, starring Sarah Lancashire and written, departments or alumni. created and directed by Sally Wainwright, aired in 2014, winning BAFTAs for best writer and best drama. Sally Wainwright lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and two sons. -
December 2000
THE ISBA BULLETIN Vol. 7 No. 4 December 2000 The o±cial bulletin of the International Society for Bayesian Analysis A WORD FROM already lays out all the elements mere statisticians might have THE PRESIDENT of the philosophical position anything to say to them that by Philip Dawid that he was to continue to could possibly be worth ISBA President develop and promote (to a listening to. I recently acted as [email protected] largely uncomprehending an expert witness for the audience) for the rest of his life. defence in a murder appeal, Radical Probabilism He is utterly uncompromising which revolved around a Modern Bayesianism is doing in his rejection of the realist variant of the “Prosecutor’s a wonderful job in an enormous conception that Probability is Fallacy” (the confusion of range of applied activities, somehow “out there in the world”, P (innocencejevidence) with supplying modelling, data and in his pragmatist emphasis P ('evidencejinnocence)). $ analysis and inference on Subjective Probability as Contents procedures to nourish parts that something that can be measured other techniques cannot reach. and regulated by suitable ➤ ISBA Elections and Logo But Bayesianism is far more instruments (betting behaviour, ☛ Page 2 than a bag of tricks for helping or proper scoring rules). other specialists out with their What de Finetti constructed ➤ Interview with Lindley tricky problems – it is a totally was, essentially, a whole new ☛ Page 3 original way of thinking about theory of logic – in the broad ➤ New prizes the world we live in. I was sense of principles for thinking ☛ Page 5 forcibly struck by this when I and learning about how the had to deliver some brief world behaves. -
Parliamentary Debates (Hansard)
Monday Volume 557 21 January 2013 No. 100 HOUSE OF COMMONS OFFICIAL REPORT PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES (HANSARD) Monday 21 January 2013 £5·00 © Parliamentary Copyright House of Commons 2013 This publication may be reproduced under the terms of the Open Parliament licence, which is published at www.parliament.uk/site-information/copyright/. HER MAJESTY’S GOVERNMENT MEMBERS OF THE CABINET (FORMED BY THE RT HON.DAVID CAMERON,MP,MAY 2010) PRIME MINISTER,FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY AND MINISTER FOR THE CIVIL SERVICE—The Rt Hon. David Cameron, MP DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER AND LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL—The Rt Hon. Nick Clegg, MP FIRST SECRETARY OF STATE AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS—The Rt Hon. William Hague, MP CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER—The Rt Hon. George Osborne, MP CHIEF SECRETARY TO THE TREASURY—The Rt Hon. Danny Alexander, MP SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT—The Rt Hon. Theresa May, MP SECRETARY OF STATE FOR DEFENCE—The Rt Hon. Philip Hammond, MP SECRETARY OF STATE FOR BUSINESS,INNOVATION AND SKILLS—The Rt Hon. Vince Cable, MP SECRETARY OF STATE FOR WORK AND PENSIONS—The Rt Hon. Iain Duncan Smith, MP LORD CHANCELLOR AND SECRETARY OF STATE FOR JUSTICE—The Rt Hon. Chris Grayling, MP SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EDUCATION—The Rt Hon. Michael Gove, MP SECRETARY OF STATE FOR COMMUNITIES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT—The Rt Hon. Eric Pickles, MP SECRETARY OF STATE FOR HEALTH—The Rt Hon. Jeremy Hunt, MP SECRETARY OF STATE FOR ENVIRONMENT,FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS—The Rt Hon. Owen Paterson, MP SECRETARY OF STATE FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT—The Rt Hon. -
ONS Board Minutes
UK STATISTICS AUTHORITY ONS Board Draft Minutes Tuesday, 22 January 2013 Boardroom, Newport Present UK Statistics Authority Professor Sir Adrian Smith (Chair) Dame Moira Gibb Mr Guy Goodwin Mr Paul Layland Dr David Levy (via audio) Ms Jil Matheson Mrs Caron Walker Mr Glen Watson Other Attendees None Secretariat Mr Robert Bumpstead Ms Sarah Green Apologies None Declarations of Interest None 1. Apologies, Minutes and Matters Arising 1.1 The 51st meeting of the ONS Board was held in Newport on Tuesday 22 January 2013. No apologies were received. The minutes of the previous meeting on 18 December 2012 were agreed as a correct record. The Chair noted the recent bad weather at Newport and the Board expressed thanks to all staff for coping with the difficult conditions, including the members of the ELT who had met in Newport the Friday before the meeting. 1.2 Progress with actions was reviewed. It was agreed that in future written notes or updates against actions should be provided with the papers in advance of the meeting, rather than verbal updates being provided at the meeting itself, where this was possible. The following actions were reconfirmed and further agreed: Action: Provide a note about user engagement with development of the ONS website to the next meeting of the ONS Board. Consider this note alongside the planned demonstration of the website at the meeting. Action: Provide a note on the position with News Releases and attach the note to the minutes of the Board meeting for circulation. The note should reflect the context of the recent PASC evidence session and the steer that the National Statistician had given about News Releases at that session.