A visualisation of the information in NHS Breast Cancer Screening leaflet

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Submitted by david on Wed, 10/06/2015 - 12:43pm

breast-leaflet.jpg

The current NHS Breast Screening leaflet contains some fairly complex information which can be summarised using the graphic below.

Why live interviews are a particular challenge for statisticians.

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Submitted by david on Sun, 17/05/2015 - 9:16pm

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 for Radio 4’s Today I remembered my media training and had prepared carefully to get my points over before they cut me off.

Was anyone right about the pre-election polls?

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Submitted by david on Wed, 13/05/2015 - 5:47pm

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 Labour and Conservative, but when the votes were counted the Conservatives had a 6.5% lead.

Comparison of vote-share BBC Poll of polls on May 6th, and actual results on May 7th.

What is your 'effective age'?

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Submitted by david on Fri, 01/05/2015 - 12:09pm

How old are you?

You might, quite reasonably, calculate your chronological age as the time elapsed since you were born. But what is the effective age of your body?

Sensationalist promotion by the World Cancer Research Fund

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Submitted by david on Wed, 25/03/2015 - 2:30pm

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 headed “Three alcoholic drinks a day can cause liver cancer, new research finds”.

Misleading conclusions from alcohol protection study

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Submitted by david on Tue, 10/02/2015 - 3:24pm

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".

But these headlines are without serious foundation, and through no fault of the journalists.

How many hours of life did Obama lose in Delhi?

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Submitted by david on Sun, 01/02/2015 - 3:04pm

obama-delhi.png

President Barack Obama recently spent 3 days in Delhi, and it’s been claimed that during this period the air pollution knocked 6 hours off his life. So who was responsible for this number?

Luck and Cancer

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Submitted by david on Sat, 03/01/2015 - 12:19pm

I was on Radio 4 PM (starting at 37:09) 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 been reported by much of the press as showing that “the majority of cancer cases are down to sheer bad luck”.

Sub-editing in the Times

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Submitted by david on Tue, 02/12/2014 - 8:47am

A story in monday's Times had the following dramatic headline:
errors-screening-headline.jpg

Is prostitution really worth £5.7 billion a year?

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Submitted by david on Sat, 25/10/2014 - 4:20pm

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 National Accounts and contributing an extra £5.3 billion to GDP at 2009 prices, which is 0.35% of GDP, half that of agriculture. But is this a reasonable estimate?

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