Statistically Speaking Statistically Speaking

The ONS podcast returns, this time looking at the importance of communicating uncertainty in statistics. Joining host Miles Fletcher to discuss is Sir Robert Chote, Chair of the UKSA; Dr Craig McLaren, of the ONS; and Professor Mairi Spowage, director of the Fraser of Allander Institute. 

 

Transcript 

MILES FLETCHER 

Welcome back to Statistically Speaking, the official podcast of the UK’s Office for National Statistics. I'm Miles Fletcher and to kick off this brand new season we're going to venture boldly into the world of uncertainty. Now, it is of course the case that nearly all important statistics are in fact estimates. They may be based on huge datasets calculated with the most robust methodologies, but at the end of the day they are statistical judgments subject to some degree of uncertainty. So, how should statisticians best communicate that uncertainty while still maintaining trust in the statistics themselves? It's a hot topic right now and to help us understand it, we have another cast of key players. I'm joined by the chair of the UK Statistics Authority Sir Robert Chote, Dr. Craig McLaren, head of national accounts and GDP here at the ONS, and from Scotland by Professor Mairi Spowage, director of the renowned Fraser of Allander Institute at the University of Strathclyde. Welcome to you all.  

Well, Sir Robert, somebody once famously said that decimal points in GDP is an economist’s way of showing they've got a sense of humour. And well, that's quite amusing - particularly if you're not an economist - there's an important truth in there isn't there? When we say GDP has gone up by 0.6%. We really mean that's our best estimate. 

  
SIR ROBERT CHOTE 
It is. I mean, I've come at this having been a consumer of economic statistics for 30 years in different ways. I started out as a journalist on the Independent and the Financial Times writing about the new numbers as they were published each day, and then I had 10 years using them as an economic and fiscal forecaster. So I come at this very much from the spirit of a consumer and am now obviously delighted to be working with producers as well. And you're always I think, conscious in those roles of the uncertainty that lies around particular economic estimates. Now, there are some numbers that are published, they are published once, and you are conscious that that's the number that stays there. But there is uncertainty about how accurately that is reflecting the real world position and that's naturally the case. You then have the world of in particular, the national accounts, which are numbers, where you have initial estimates that the producer returns to and updates as the information sets that you have available to draw your conclusions develops over time. And it's very important to remember on the national accounts that that's not a bug, that's a feature of the system. And what you're trying to do is to measure a very complicated set of transactions you're trying to do in three ways, measuring what the economy produces, measuring incomes, measuring expenditure. You do that in different ways with information that flows in at different times. So it's a complex task and necessarily the picture evolves. So I think from the perspective of a user, it's important to be aware of the uncertainty and it's important when you're presenting and publishing statistics to help people engage with that, because if you are making decisions based on statistics, if you're simply trying to gain an understanding of what's going on in the economy or society, generally speaking you shouldn't be betting the farm on the assumption that any particular number is, as you say, going to be right to decimal places. And the more that producers can do to help people engage with that in an informed and intelligent way, and therefore mean that decisions that people take on the basis of this more informed the better.  

  
MF 
So it needs to be near e

 
 
In this episode Miles is joined by the National Statistician, Sir Ian Diamond, to reflect on what has been a busy and transformative year at the Office for National Statistics. 

 

Transcript  

 
MILES FLETCHER 
This is “Statistically Speaking”, the official podcast of the UK Office for National Statistics, I’m Miles Fletcher. This is our 20th episode, in fact, a milestone of sorts, though not a statistically significant one. What is significant is that we're joined, once again, to look back at the highlights from another 12 months here at the ONS by none other than the National Statistician himself, Professor Sir Ian Diamond. Ian, thanks for joining us again. The year started for you with being reappointed as the national statistician. As 2023 developed, how glad did you feel to be back? 
 
SIR IAN DIAMOND 

Of course, you know, I was hugely privileged to be invited to continue. It's one of the most exciting things you could ever do and I will continue to do everything in my power to bring great statistics to the service of our nation. 
 
MF 
To business then, and this time last year, we sat in this very room talking about the results of Census 2021, which were coming in quite fresh then. And we've seen the fastest growth of the population, you told us, since the baby boom of the early 1960s. Over the course of the year much more data has become available from that census and this time, we've been able to make it available for people in much richer ways, including interactive maps, create your own data set tools. What does that say about the population data generally and the way that people can access and use it now? How significant is that there's that sort of development? 
 
SID 
Well I think we need to recognise that the sorts of things that we can do now, with the use of brilliant technology, brilliant data science and brilliant computing is enabling us to understand our population more, to be able to make our data more accessible. 50, 60, 70 years ago, 150 years ago, we would have just produced in about six or seven years after the census, a report with many, many tables and people would have just been able to look at those tables. Now, we're able to produce data which enables people to build their own tables, to ask questions of data. It’s too easy to say, tell me something interesting, you know, the population of Dorset is this. Okay, that's fine, but actually he wants to know much more about whether that's high or low. You want to know much more about the structure of the population, what its needs for services are, I could go on and on. And each individual will have different questions to ask of the data, and enabling each individual to ask those questions which are important to them, and therefore for the census to be more used, is I think, an incredibly beautiful thing. 
 
MF 
And you can go onto the website there and create a picture... 
 
SID 
Anyone can go onto the website, anyone can start to ask whatever questions they want of the data. And to get very clearly, properly statistically disclosed answers which enable them to use those data in whatever way they wish to. 
 
MF 
And it's a demonstration of obviously the richness of data that's available now from all kinds of sources, and behind that has been a discussion of, that's gone on here in the ONS and beyond this year, about what the future holds for population statistics and how we can develop those and bring those on. There's been a big consultation going on at the moment. What's the engagement with that consultation been like? 
 
SID 

Well the engagement's been great, we’ve had around 700 responses, and it addresses some fundamental questions. So the census is a really beautiful thing. But at the same time, the census, the last one done the 21st of March 2021, was out of date by the 22nd of March 2021, and more and more out of date as you go on and many of our users say

 
The ONS led the way informing the UK response to the Coronavirus pandemic. But what lessons can be learned and how can we best prepare not only ourselves, but the rest of the world, for the next pandemic?  
 

Transcript 

MILES FLETCHER 

This is Statistically Speaking, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Podcast. I'm Miles Fletcher, and as we approach the darkest months of winter, we're revisiting COVID-19.  

Now the ONS doesn't do predictions, and we're certainly not forecasting a resurgence of the virus, either here in the UK or anywhere else. But pandemic preparedness has been the driving force behind two important pieces of work that we're going to be talking about this time. Looking beyond our shores, how well equipped now is the world in general to spot and monitor emerging infections? We'll hear from Josie Golding of the Wellcome Trust on that, including how even weather events like El Nino could affect the spread of viruses. We'll also talk to my ONS colleague, Joy Preece about the pandemic preparedness toolkit, a five-year project backed by Wellcome to create and develop resources that will help countries with health surveillance in the event of future pandemics.  

But first, and closer to home, a new UK winter surveillance study to gather vital data on COVID-19 is now well underway. Jo Evans is its head of operations. Jo, this is a brand new COVID-19 survey the ONS is running in partnership with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). What is the new survey and what's it going to be monitoring over the winter? 

JO EVANS 

So this is now the winter COVID infection study. And we're going to be going out to, I think we've got 145,000 people signed up, and we're going to ask them to take a lateral flow test to see if they are testing positive for COVID-19. Then we'll ask them to tell us a little bit about how they're feeling, what symptoms they have and some other household information - what work do they do? Do they have caring responsibilities? And so on.  

MF 

So we're gonna be getting people to take a test and everyone's familiar of course now with administering their own lateral flow test, that wasn't the case back in the early days of the pandemic, when it was a new thing for the vast majority of us. So they'll take a test that'll tell us whether they are positive or negative for COVID-19. And on top of that, we're going to be gathering data in the form of a questionnaire.  

JE 

That's right. And then this is a collaboration this time, so we'll be working with the UKHSA. I mean, we've worked with them on the COVID infection study before, but this time what we'll be doing is looking at those responses of how many people are telling us that they have COVID-19 And we'll be trying to understand that by where people live or their age group and so on, but we'll be sharing that information with UKHSA and they will then be looking at what the impact is on hospitals. So what they call the infection hospitalisation rate, how many people are going into hospital because they have COVID, so it'll really help us understand what pressures there are on the NHS over this winter period. 

MF 

And that will give us some inkling, once again, about how many people are infected but not actually displaying any symptoms? 

JE 

Absolutely. And we do ask people about their symptoms and if they tell us they test positive, we'll then be sending them a second questionnaire, a follow up, asking them to keep testing until they get two consecutive negative tests so that we can see how long they are testing positive, but we'll also ask them how long did their symptoms last and did they need to go and see a doctor, did they take any medication, so really trying to understand how they're experiencing that period of illness. 

MF 

So during those critical winter months, that'll give us some insight into what's really going on on-the- ground a

In this episode we talk about the growth of data use in the media and the potential impact of misinformation on the public’s trust in official statistics.  

Navigating podcast host Miles Fletcher through this minefield is Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, from the University of Cambridge; Ed Humpherson, Head of the Office for Statistics Regulation; and award-winning data journalist Simon Rogers. 

 

Transcript 

 

MILES FLETCHER 

Welcome again to Statistically Speaking, the official podcast of the UK’s Office for National Statistics, I'm Miles Fletcher. Now we've talked many times before in these podcasts about the rise of data and its impact on our everyday lives. It's all around us of course, and not least in the media we consume every day. But ‘what’ or ‘who’ to trust: mainstream media, public figures and national institutions like the ONS, or those random strangers bearing gifts of facts and figures in our social media feeds? 

To help us step carefully through the minefields of misinformation and on, we hope, to the terra firma of reliable statistical communication, we have three interesting and distinguished voices, each with a different perspective. Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter is a well-known voice to UK listeners. He's chair of the Winton Centre for Risk Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge and was a very prominent voice on the interpretation of public health data here during the COVID pandemic. Also, we have Ed Humpherson, Director General of regulation and head of the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), the official stats watchdog if you like, and later in this podcast, I'll be joined by award winning data journalist and writer Simon Rogers, who now works as data editor at Google. 

Professor, you've been one of the most prominent voices these last few years – a fascinating few years, obviously, for statistics in which we were told quite frankly, this was a golden age for statistics and data. I mean, reflecting on your personal experience as a prominent public voice in that debate, when it comes to statistics and data, to be very general, how well informed are we now as a public, or indeed, how ill-informed on statistics?  

 

DAVID SPIEGELHALTER 

I think things have improved after COVID. You know, for a couple of years we saw nothing but numbers and graphs on the news and in the newspapers and everywhere, and that went down very well. People didn't object to that. In fact, they wanted more. And I think that has led to an increased profile for data journalism, and there's some brilliant ones out there. I'm just thinking of John Burn-Murdoch on the FT but lots of others as well, who do really good work. Of course, in the mainstream media there is still the problem of non-specialists getting hold of data and getting it wrong, and dreadful clickbait headlines. It is the sub editors that wreck it all just by sticking some headline on what might be a decent story to get the attention and which is quite often misleading. So that's a standard problem. In social media, yeah, during COVID and afterwards, there are people I follow who you might consider as - I wouldn't say amateurs at all, but they're not professional pundits or media people - who just do brilliant stuff, and who I've learned so much from. There are also some terrible people out there, widespread misinformation claims which are based on data and sound convincing because they have got numbers in them. And that, I mean, it's not a new problem, but now it is widespread, and it's really tricky to counter and deal with, but very important indeed.  

 

MF 

So the issue aside from - those of us who deal with the media have heard this a hundred times - “I don't write the headlines”, reporters will tell you when you challenge that misleading kind of headline. But would you say it’s the mainstream media then, because they can be called out on what t

In this episode, we explore ONS’s work with other countries to raise the world's statistical capabilities. 
 
Transcript 

MILES FLETCHER 

Hello and welcome again to ‘Statistically Speaking’, the Office for National Statistics’ Podcast. I'm Miles Fletcher, and in this episode we're going international.  

Now it hardly needs saying that global issues, climate change, population growth, inflation, to name a few are best understood and addressed with the benefit of good global statistics. So, to that end, the ONS works in partnership with a number of countries worldwide with the ultimate aim of raising the world's statistical capabilities. At the one end of Africa, for example, a continent where it’s deeply involved, that includes embedding state of the art inflation indices and other economic data in Ghana. On the other side of the continent, it's meant using AI and machine learning to track the movement of displaced populations in Somalia. How do you run a census in places where nobody has a permanent address?  

It's all fascinating work and here to tell us about it, Emily Poskett, Head of International Development at the ONS; Tim Harris of the ONS Data Science Campus’s international development team; and joining us from Accra, our special guest, Government Statistician of the Republic of Ghana and head of the Ghanaian Statistical Service Professor Samuel Annim. 

Emily then, to start give us the big overview if you would, set out for us the scale and the purpose of this international development work that the ONS is doing. 

 

EMILY POSKETT 

We work with countries around the developing world to support strong modern statistical systems wherever we see a suitable opportunity to do so. 

  

MF 

What form does that work take? Does it mean statisticians going out to these countries? 

  

EP 

Yes, it does, when that's the right way to go about things. So our work is usually through the form of medium-term partnerships with a small group of national statistical offices, or NSOs, from the developing world, and those partnerships are medium term over a number of years in order to build up a real understanding of the context in that country, that national statistical office’s vision for modernization and how the ONS can be of most help to achieve their own goals under their own strategy.  

That relationship will normally be led by a particular individual who spends time getting to know the context and getting to know the people, getting to know what ONS can do to help. A partnership might cover a range of topic areas from census to data science to leadership training to economic statistics, and the lead point of contact, the strategic advisor in many cases, will bring in the relevant experts from across ONS, and they'll work through virtual collaboration but also through on-site visits, and they will work out the best timing for those and the best delivery modality in order to ensure that the gains are sustained. Our primary focus really is to make sure that changes that we support in the partner organisation are sustainable, and the work that ONS does using the UK’s aid budget is really impactful and leads to long term change.  

We don't always work through direct partnerships, for example where we see opportunities to work alongside other organisations, so international institutions like the World Bank or other national statistics offices like Statistics Canada or Statistics Sweden, they might choose to bring us in to deliver small pieces of focussed technical assistance alongside their own programmes. One of our medium-term partnerships is with the United Nations Economic Commission For Africa (UNECA), and they work with all 54 countries of Africa, and they can choose to bring in our expertise alongside their own to target particular needs in particular countries. But I would say that 70% of our effort is through these medium-

In this episode we chat to members of the ONS Social Survey Collection Division about the importance, and challenges, of getting the general public to take part in crucial surveys that help paint a picture of what life is like across Britain.
 
Transcript 

MILES FLETCHER 

Welcome again to ‘Statistically Speaking’, the official podcast of the UK’s Office for National Statistics. I’m Miles Fletcher.  

Now I don’t know about you - but it seems hardly a moment passes these days when we are not being asked to feed back. How was our service today? Are you satisfied with this product?  Please fill in this short survey. Your responses matter. 

Well, forgive the natural bias, but today we’re talking about surveys that really do matter.  

ONS surveys – some of which are the very largest conducted regularly in the UK – don’t just inform economic and social policy, though they are hugely important to it. The data they gathered also represent a public resource of immense and unique value.  

But persuading people – some unaware, some sceptical and even hostile, others just very busy – to take part in them is a growing challenge for statistical institutions worldwide.      

In this episode then we’ll be discussing how the ONS gathers often personal data from members of the public right up and down the country.  

Taking time out of their day to answer my questions, and to explain why it’s absolutely crucial that you participate in our surveys if you get the opportunity to do so, are Emma Pendre and Beth Ferguson, who head up the ONS’s face-to-face Field Operations;  

and sharing their own personal experiences of life on other people’s doorsteps we have two of the ONS’s top Field Interviewers, Tammy Fullelove and Benjamin Land. 

Welcome to you all. 

Emma, if I come to you first – give us an idea of what exactly the field community in ONS is. Who are you and what do you do?  

EMMA PENDRE 

The Social Survey Collection Division is the largest division in ONS. We primarily collect data from households either online, face to face or by telephone using computer assisted interviewing, and also work at air, sea and rail ports collecting data from passengers. All the data collected is used to produce quite a number of our key ONS publications which help to paint a picture of what life is like in the UK. And these can include things like estimates of employment and unemployment, how we measure inflation, how we measure migration, and a key topic of interest at the moment is the cost of living. So while most of ONS relies on the data that we collect for our outputs and statistical bulletins, the statistics that we particularly generate also support research, policy development and decision making across government and other private sector businesses as well.  

MF 

Now Beth, bringing you in here, when it comes to household surveys, presumably someone's deciding which households are going to be approached to take part. Who makes those decisions and how is it done? 
 
BETH FERGUSON 
So I'm not going to pretend to understand the clever people in the statistics team who work out how we get the right people to cover a broad spectrum of society. But yes, that's done by the sampling team and they choose a random sample for the surveys.  

MF 

And that's generated presumably from using the electoral roll.  

BF 

It's generated from something called PAF which is the Post Office Address Finder. I'll have to confirm exactly what that stands for. Yes, but essentially, it's a list of addresses across England, Scotland and Wales.  

MF 

And when it comes to the passenger survey, it's a question of stopping what we hope will be a representative random sample of people as they pass through those ports.  

BF 

Yes, it is. Yeah. But at the moment we're currently working on departures and arrivals.