@robertcuffe.bsky.social
BBC News’s statistician. Number nerd 24-7-365.2425
The LFS may have its failings, but it still beats opt-in data on faith among young adults.
pewrsr.ch/4bbNh8N
VAT banter. Niche audience but I’m in that niche so I’m here for it
@louisashworth.bsky.social
Solar's not the biggest renewable in Britain but it drove last year's rise to record renewable generation.
From @beckydale.bsky.social @markpoynting.bsky.social & Jess Carr's
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
I only managed two episodes of it in a fit of enthusiasm.
07.01.2026 17:24 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Has anyone seen a good stats analysis of The Traitors?
07.01.2026 16:25 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0
Figure 1: The Rothman-Dahly Evidence Pyramid (original version) An equilateral triangle with a small blue section labelled "Thoughtful, well-conducted studies of any design" at the top, with the remaining space colored red and labelled "The other shit"
It has a name now 😜
Many thanks to Ken for agreeing to put his good name to my...artwork. The image is in the public domain (CC 0), but citations to the linked documents are warmly welcomed.
✅ zenodo.org/records/1808...
✅ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24452418/
You remember that Nature Aging paper about how multilingualism protects against accelerated aging? Well…
17.12.2025 07:15 — 👍 170 🔁 54 💬 9 📌 1540k small boat crossings so far this year is
- second highest on record
- less than half of asylum claims*
- about 5% of immigration*
*July '24 - June '25, latest figs
More on BBC's migration tracker: bit.ly/4rVv595
*The truth is that a huge pessimistic bias in our national accounts has led us to be fed with contemporary reports of doom and gloom, which subsequently turn out to be nonsense"
. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @chrisgiles.ft.com
Record* life expectancy for women in the UK.
*by 0.01 years.
The Commons Library is recruiting a housing policy researcher!
As ever: highly recommended workplace, great people, interesting work, etc etc. Apply!
housesofparliament.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/...
Record low murder rate in England and Wales
10.11.2025 19:50 — 👍 6 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 1
We would love to hear your thoughts on our new set of maths teaching resources, developed in partnership with @mathsweek.scot
Please share widely! @robertcuffe.bsky.social @rssedinburgh.bsky.social @rss-teach.bsky.social #MathsWeekScot
Surely should be a portrait of Notey McNoteface?
British Bulldogs to Basil Fawlty - your banknote redesign ideas www.bbc.com/news/article...
Strong +1. Civil service statisticians made excellent technical contributions to recent UK Statistics Assembly.
27.06.2025 07:37 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0UK's data agency has 'deep seated' issues, review finds
ONS will reallocate ~10m worth of FTE to fix core econ stats
National Stato job will be split into two: technical + running org
Govt will look at the legislation defining roles and governance of UK stats
www.bbc.com/news/article...
I’m a statistician who has to write data as a singular. Don’t get me started on style guides….
26.06.2025 14:53 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
House style is to write with some lower case if you can pronounce it as a word: NHS but Nafta.
www.bbc.co.uk/newsstylegui...
Among the new BBC editorial guidelines taking effect in September is an expanded chapter on stats, data, polls and surveys
www.bbc.co.uk/editorialgui...
Looks like the left hand col is an size of trade deficit with a country (relative to total imports from that country).
www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c1...
Trump says that there’s a “minimum baseline tariff” of 10% being applied.
02.04.2025 20:33 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
Both UK and Singapore are alleged to be imposing 10% tariffs on US (left had col). Unusually, the rate US will charge is not half that but is 10%.
02.04.2025 20:32 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
Says US tariffs are set at half the tariffs (including non-tariff trade barriers) that those countries impose on US.
02.04.2025 20:32 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Trump announces 20% ‘reciprocal’ tariffs for EU. 10% for UK.
02.04.2025 20:28 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Our complaint re the growth in health benefits has been upheld: osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/corresponden...: "The statement that the number of people claiming disability elements of Universal Credit has increased by 383% presents an entirely misleading picture to the public."
01.04.2025 08:45 — 👍 55 🔁 28 💬 6 📌 5
The head of Amnesty International UK claims in this Guardian article that "The evidence that [predictive policing] keeps us safe just isn’t there". But that's simply not true.
Let's look at what the best-available evidence on predictive policing shows …
🧵
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
How does publishing data this way help inform the public?
Lunchtime data: www.gov.uk/government/p...
Evening data: www.gov.uk/government/p...
...there was a new figure (19k returns!) and a press release embargoed until 1700, when a new "data" publication arrived.
The 16.4k covered data up to the end of Dec, which will be made available, in full, scrutinisable detail later this month. Same can't be said for the 19k.
Fig 5 here bit.ly/4aWJ3Qj are the most recent proper data (to Sept 2024).
Most of the figs in yesterday's Home Office comms blitz were not accompanied by proper data.
We got a press release overnight (16.4k returns) with "data" the next day at lunchtime. But by then..
Home Office Tweet. Text says "Through our Plan for Change, we have removed almost 19,000 people including failed asylum seekers, foreign criminals and immigration offenders from the UK since July 2024."
Screengrab of Home Office stats showing that the single largest category of returns are "other verified returns": people who left the country of their own accord and whose departure was discovered later by the Home Office.
Pretty poor stats from UK Home Office yesterday.
Firstly, misleading to say 19k people were removed. Most "returns" (this stat) are people who left voluntarily, most often those who left of their own accord and whose departure the Home Office only discovered later when (e.g.) checking visa data.
