Is Publishing Statistics a Good Idea?
Statistics published today about heart operations show a very strong increase in success. This is despite warnings from the medical profession, that publishing statistics on success rates, would lead to conservative procedures.
This is a real result for openness.
I believe strongly that publishing information responsibly is always for the better. I think too that politicians are finally getting round to this belief, with David Cameron wanting all government and political expenses to be published on the Internet. He’s right, but he doesn’t go far enough.
What would I do?
The Health and Safety Executive has set a small precedent by publishing reasonably detailed lists of fatal incidents on their web site. But they don’t go far enough and the data is not published in a form that can easily be downloaded from the web site. This would enable analyses to be made to see if there are ways of increasing safety.
Obviously, databases of this type should be desensitised before they are put on line. For instance, I might be described as male, white, between 55 and 65 and living in St. Edmundsbury.
But suppose the following databases were available on-line and in a form such as Excel that was easily downloaded.
- Births by sex, post code, multiple birth etc.
- Deaths by sex, age, cause, smoker etc.
- Serious road accident by vehicle involved, post code, road type etc.
- Crime by type, post code, victim, clear up, sentence etc.
- Prisoner by sex, offence, age, prison etc.
- Illegal immigrant by country, sex etc.
This would remove much of the speculation beloved of the tabloid newspapers, who publish a statistic that proves their bigoted point of view.
The government and industry might like to try to keep hold of this data. They will cite confidentiality, security and other spurious reasons. However, as precedents are set, it will be extremely difficult to keep things confidential.
We will all benefit through access to these databases.
Cat Without a Ticket
This story about a cat is almost unbelievable.
But then truth is always stranger than fiction.
Is it Usury?
I was rather surprised that Provident Financial, who reported good results this week, charge some of its customers an interest rate of up to 545% on loans. Martin Narey of Barnardos is not amused. And neither am I!
But to criticise the company is wrong, as they are merely filling a gap in the financial services market, that should be catered for by micro-finance companies and credit unions. As to the latter it has always puzzled me why they have such a low profile in this country, compared to the United States. They seem to be ideal for the times and also for lending small amounts of money in more stretched communities. Especially, as any profits stay in that community.
Could it be that the regulations are framed to protect the banks? After all, no credit union has ever taken the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the British Grand Prix or other major sporting event. And they probably don’t pay anything to the government, except perhaps VAT and Income Tax for employees.
At least though, the spam I used to get from doorstep lenders like Providential has stopped. (They didn’t send any incidentally! Or not to me at any rate!) This offered me loans at high rate and it came from spam companies in the United States. However, a letter to my MP, who talked to the government, stopped the process in days.
There’s another moral in that tale. Don’t underestimate the power of your MP! If you have a problem write to them!
Russell Crowe Spoils His Image
Russell Crowe likes to give the impression he is a hard man. But does this episode in a charity shop show he has a softer side?
It’s actually not the first time he’s donated to charity and you could even argue this one is small by his standards. That’s not to denigrate what he did.
A New Canal
Canals in the UK are always thought to be something that were created in the dim distant past, where railways didn’t exist. But two hundred years after it was first mooted, a new canal is being created in the heart of England.
The first tangible signs of the proposed Bedford & Milton Keynes Waterway, which has the potential to become one of the great projects of the 21st century, are taking shape in central Bedfordshire.
This is how it is announced on the web site, but the canal, which links the Great Ouse to the Grand Union Canal, looks to have tremendous potential at unlocking leisure activities, by linking the waterways of East Anglia to those of the Midlands.
Everything I’ve read about this project looks sensible and it is one of a number of similar projects that should be performed in these difficult times. Once created, this waterway will still be around in hundreds or even thousands of years.
Nasty to Esther
Esther Rantzen is standing for election in the next Parliament.
I wish her luck.
But the celebrity ex-MPs on BBC Breakfast Time were not very welcoming of her actions. Humm! Perhaps they are jealous of her energy and guts!
Rural Crime in Suffolk Still Falling
This was the headline in Saturday’s East Anglian Daily Times. The article doesn’t seem to have been posted.
I’ve only had a couple of incidents in the last twenty years and these involved people nicking stuff from outbuildings where I lived.
The figure shows that in the whole of Suffolk, just 68.8 crimes were reported per 1,000 of the population, making it one of the lowest levels in the country.
The Police put it down to the work of Safer Neighbourhood Teams, but I actually wonder if the low levels of crime are for deeper reasons.
Suffolk is a pretty prosperous county and it has fairly low unemployment, so there are probably a lot fewer people who need to turn to crime. It also hasn’t until recently had a large student population and according to various writers, a lot of crime is around students, who are not as careful with their accommodation and possessions than most of us.
I travel to London a lot and you notice a very different attitude on the part of the Police you meet on the street between the Met and the Suffolk Constabulary. The former tends to be remote and aggressive, whilst my local force tries to act as part of the community and be reasonably pleasant. So is it just that in Suffolk, we give the Police the information they need. Ipswich certainly did that with the murders of several women a couple of years ago.
So there might be a lesson here.
Keep the Police forces small and local. Co-operate on a higher level by all means and use compatible systems, but do people prefer to deal with an officer, who is not just a policeman, but part of the community as well?
I think they do!
Lightning Sadly Strikes Twice
Hopefully Felipe Massa will be OK after his freak accident, whilst qualifying on Saturday, but tragically Henry Surtees was not so lucky. Both were hit with bits of other cars, that happened to be bouncing on the track.
Motor racing is dangerous, but so are other sports, like horse riding and rugby, although motor racing has just had a bad week. But what is interesting is that the authorities are probing the reasons for the accidents and that some of the ideas they incorporate eventually filter down to our daily life.
But as a statistician, I can’t help feeling that both accidents were against odds of thousands to one.
After all on Sunday in Hungary, Alonso’s Renault lost a wheel and it bounced harmlessly down the track, before coming to rest by a crash barrier. But that was totally avoidable, as the mechanics had not put the wheel on correctly.
It also has lessons for us all, in that how many of us check all the wheels before we take our car on the road?
Sometimes I do, but on my last trip to Holland, I found on return that I had a damaged tyre, which probably should have been changed before I left. A failure would have been supremely annoying, as my Jaguar does not have a proper spare wheel! And do you know how to change a wheel on your car?
So although the tragic events on the race track of last week, were very sad and my heart goes out to everyone involved, do we take those simple precautions that would make us all safer on the roads, at work and especially in the home?
I doubt it!
Bigamy is Two Things, But What is Five?
I thought I’d heard it wrong, as I drove home from London. But a lady really has had four bigamous husbands.
Apparently, she is warming up number six!
Trinny Relaunches Herself
Trinny Woodall relaunches herself more than the space shuttle.
I first came across Trinny and her business partner, Susannah Constantine, at a presentation given by First Tuesday at the height of the Dot Com boom. They were launching a website for women and like many others launched at the time, I think it failed. Interestingly, I liked the idea and in common with others at the time, did they launch before the punters were ready for it?
Few sites have survived from those heady days, and most of the ones that have, have either have backers with deep pockets or no backers at all. It probably says that if you want a successful business, make sure you have control of the finances.
Perhaps, her latest relaunch is the most spectacular, as she has turned the clock back with her body.
There is a lot of truth in the old motto.
If at first you don’t succeed, then try, try, try again.
Or perhaps in Trinny’s case.
If you’ve succeeded once, you can always do it again.
I wish her the best of luck.
Especially, as at the age of nearly 62, I’m trying to get really fit. But perhaps more importantly, I’m creating a whole new suite of software, which is the successor to all of the stuff I wrote in the 1970s.
It’s hard, but it’s fun!
The Anonymous Widower 