Numbers are incredible things. Not only can they be used for simple arithmetic, but they can enlighten us to the world around us, as well as help to solve puzzles and problems. They can be very interesting in their own right too.
This is a good one if you have already enjoyed a birthday this year …add your birth year with your current age and what do you get? 2022! Okay, that was simple.
If you multiply a number by 9 and add all the digits of the new number together, the sum will always add up to 9. Huh….really?!
Numbers can also be used to mislead people. Data, or business intelligence, is seen as knowledge in these times, where super computers can do complex calculations in microseconds or find unfathomable patterns among thousands of digits. But not everything we see should be believed to be what it is, especially when looking at charts and statistics.
For example, consider some stats for an imaginary football team. The team have won their last 4 games out of 5, giving them a win ratio of 80%. They look like they could be title contenders. But out of their last 20 games, the same team have only won 5, so their long term success ratio is 25%. Which actually makes them firm favourites for relegation. You have to be careful not only with the data, but how it can be manipulated.
Just take the Office for National Statistics (ONS). They are said to be the UK’s largest independent producer of official statistics and the recognised national statistical institute. Great. But then you find that the ONS website actually sits on a gov.uk domain and it starts to look a little bit fishy. A Googly search also shows it to be a Government department, so are they actually independent or not?
Apparently a recent report found that 85% of people who gave a view, trusted the statistics produced by the Office for National Statistics. How many people were asked about this report? How many refused to give a view? And just how many of the 85% were Tory Party members? Hmm…
The ONS like to report statistics on important but rather dull things, like birth rates, death rates, COVID and anything else linked to the UK that they think is quite dramatic. Although if you have the energy to actually look at anything on their website, the only good thing that it is going to achieve is to help you to get to sleep a lot quicker.
Take a look at the latest COVID infection rates. The ONS tells us that the infection rate is at 2.03% and on the increase. But is that a true picture of the UK, considering we do not need to report being infected any more and hardly anyone bothers to take a lateral flow test?
Another fascinating section is the UK population. With immigration being such a hot topic, how do their figures calculate net migration? According to the ONS, the usual resident population of England and Wales was 59,597,300 on Census Day, 21 March 2021. This was assuming that everyone they knew about completed the census. It also assumes that the ONS knew about everyone living here in order to send them the census form in the first place. Which is jolly unlikely. Especially when you consider a good proportion of people in London are unknowns.
Migration also throws up a few challenges to the poor peeps at ONS too. Unless they have someone stationed at every beach in Kent, how on earth are they going to keep track of the numbers arriving and disappearing into our streets?
It is interesting that there are no graphs available with the migration statistics, unlike some of the other sections on the website. They also mention “experimental estimates” which implies that they don’t really know, so will just provide some sort of rough estimate – to the nearest 10 million or so! The ONS will only release certain statistics and even then, we need to be cautious how we interpret the actual data. Basically they will only show us what they want us to see, or what the Government want us to see. Which makes their whole existence a bit pointless
If the ONS want to be truly independent and serve the UK population, perhaps they need to start releasing statistics that actually mean something. Like just how many of us have been involved in a ‘recent survey’ for Family Fortunes? Or just how many chocolate bars have reduced in size recently and by what percentage? How many of the population have tasted Scampi flavoured fries? And how many of those people like them?
Then their work may begin to make some sense and we may all start to take a bit more notice.
