Tag Archives: misuse of statistics

Schoolboy error

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Settle down at the back, there. Today we’re going to learn basic numeracy.
Do pay attention, Sir Michael Wilshaw (Chief Inspector of Schools, head of Ofsted, the agency that inspects schools…) This will be on the test.
On Breakfast TV this morning, you said that UK schools were failing to keep up with the rest of the world, and that one in 5 ten-year-olds were failing to reach the average.
LOL, LOL again.
Nobody on BBC Breakfast challenged this. The discussion continued as if he had said something both meaningful and scary. (And, of course, nobody said – “Surely this slide down the world’s literacy league tables coincides with the past decade’s massive expansion of school inspection activity?”)
OK, I naturally assumed the “average” word was a slip of the tongue. I told quite a few people because I was amazed that the chief inspector of schools didn’t understand the concept of a mean. But, on the BBC website, some more savvy person (maybe someone who’d studied Maths at the age of 11, as Sir Michael clearly hadn’t) had changed the reported words to refer to expected standards. Maybe I’d dreamt it.
But it turns out that Sir Michael had said the same thing on Newsnight the night before.
As the Guardian reported, a flurry of well-earned Internet derision followed the Newsnight speech. Ofsted press office said it was just a “slip of the tongue”.
Impossible that he and his press office didn’t spot any twittered mirth. But, there he was on BBC Breakfast, this morning, with his tongue still slipping wildly and disgorging the same scare story, using the same silly “average” word.
To misquote Oscar Wilde, to misuse one statistical concept may be a misfortune, to misuse two begins to look a lot like innumeracy.
I’ll be charitable and take it that he “really” meant “expected standard” but was more interested in getting in a soundbite than in communicating meaningfully. (In that case, of course, he’s failed basic literacy requirements instead.)
As the Guardian blog showed, Sir Michael isn’t alone in his innumeracy. The Secretary of State for Education is equally challenged by the statistical concept of averages. This is priceless:

Chair: One is: if “good” requires pupil performance to exceed the national average, and if all schools must be good, how is this mathematically possible?
Michael Gove: By getting better all the time.
Chair: So it is possible, is it?
Michael Gove: It is possible to get better all the time.
Chair: Were you better at literacy than numeracy, Secretary of State?
Michael Gove: I cannot remember.

This sort of thing would normally inspire pity. He’s obviously not very bright but, in a fair world, he could probably get useful work that didn’t need academic skills. In the real universe, he’s Secretary of State for Education.
In which role, he’s hellbent on promoting the ludicrous Academies. These obviously make perfect sense if you’re a business person who wants to get your hands on public money that’s earmarked for education but make no sense to anyone else.
The process seems to be –

  1. Ofsted “inspects” a school
  2. They declare it to be “failing” and in need of “special measures”
  3. The school has to choose between becoming an Academy or being closed
  4. An Academy is set up, it gets the money that the local authority would have paid to the school
  5. The school becomes Outstanding in the next inspection

But there’s a hiccup. A few awkward schools are refusing.
Heads are rolling resigning or knuckling under. And now, intransigent (locally elected) school governors are being dismissed and replaced by government appointees – who by an amazing coincidence turn out to be very pro-academy. (Downhills Primary, Nightingale Primary):

“We have therefore decided to appoint an interim executive board to give the school the leadership and expertise it needs to improve.
“Those connected with the school will then be consulted on whether the school should convert into a sponsored academy under the leadership of the Harris Federation.”
The hand-picked interim executive board will be chaired by Les Walton, the chairman of the the Young People’s Learning Agency – the academies’ funding body.
Other members include the head of the Harris Federation, Dr Dan Moyniham, and Dame Sylvia Morris.
Dame Sylvia has just retired as head teacher of St Saviour and St Mary Overy Primary School in Southwark. She was made a dame in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours for services to education, and mentors new head teachers in four London boroughs….
At a parliamentary committee hearing in January, Mr Gove labelled campaigners against the academy plan for Downhills “Trots”, claiming they were politically motivated and linked to the Socialist Workers Party. (from the BBC)

One can only hope that Mr Gove is himself politically motivated. Otherwise, the whole operation looks a lot like straightforward theft.

Numberwang on the web

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The Guardian has a Data Blog with the subtitle Facts are sacred..

Tempting as it is to wander round the epistemological byways here (What’s a “fact,” for a start?) I’ll spare you that. Instead I’ll express bafflement about the factualness of some specific facts on government websites posted yesterday.

A decorative graphic has blobs to represent the costs of UK government websites. There’s a clickthrough button to get the data from Manyeyes.

The data is shocking, on first view. For instance, it seems to have cost the UK taxpayer £154 for every visit to the Cabinet Office site. Cue horror. Except that these appear to be made-up numbers, with the calculations done on a solar powered calculator sitting at the bottom of a deep well.

Here are a few columns that I took from the data, applied simple maths to and lo! most sites cost a few pence per visit.

I’ve left the original numbers so you can work out costs per visit yourself. I’ve shown my calculations on a blue background.

Details from the govt webcosts spreadsheet

Details from the govt webcosts spreadsheet

I fear I’m doing the post a disservice when I scroll down and find a link to Google docs that offers the full data. Download the full list as spreadsheet doesn’t work for me but, when I look at the data on this sheet, it makes a lot more sense. Costs per visit are down to pence rather than tens of pounds. Not that I can replicate this either. But I get a lot closer.
UK govt web costs, as held in google docs

Ah ha: At the end of the Guardian post there’s a caveat:

UPDATE: an error in the cost per visitor column has now been corrected

Sorry, not when I looked at it it. Which, surely must be after it’s been corrected, or else I wouldn’t be able to see the correction note.

In any case, the original costs are dubious. Some of these sites must be new and have not got a full year’s data. The basis on which any given department has costed its sites might be wholly individual. I am forced to conclude that these are pretty well just made up numbers from start to finish. Although that doesn’t excuse the failure for anyone to notice that a simple division has been borked.

Any reader would gasp at the idea of sites that squander 3 week’s unemployment benefit on each visitor. That “information” sticks in the mind. Few readers would be finicky enough to look at the detail.

It says Facts are Sacred in bold letters at the head of the post. You could be forgiven for absent-mindedly taking it that someone had made sure that these were sacred facts.

A paranoid person might easily assume that the release of such spurious data was part of a propaganda offensive to convince UK voters that the public sector is so bloated and wasteful that the planned public sector cuts will not affect anything important. They’ll just involve stopping stupid and wasteful spending….

Like the imaginary huge (6-year-salary!) redundancy payments to inherently idle public sector workers that another Guardian blogger treats as a representative of the true position. Then characterises the head of a public sector union as a rabid militant for opposing the destruction of his member’s jobs and employment conditions.

I initially, and charitably, assumed this was a random Comment is Free post, maybe by a freelancing Daily Mail journalist.

But it appears that the writer is a senior figure in the Guardian. He was the Guardian’s political editor for 16 years. From his profile:

Michael White is assistant editor and has been writing for the Guardian for over 30 years

I see I have been spending £300 every ten minutes on buying the Guardian and it’s only ever worth it on the increasingly-rare days when Charlie Brooker is side-splittingly funny and Marina Hyde isn’t engaged in electoral enthusiasms for former presenters of shows about amusing vegetables. I begin to think a 40% cut in my Guardian spending is long overdue.