• National Health State

    Some striking charts on public spending. The resolution foundation predicts that by 2028-29, health will account for half of day to day spending. Meanwhile: More in the FT. The article gives several examples of health services stepping in to provide services, including housing, that were once provided by councils.

  • What is a confidence interval?

    I think confidence intervals might be the most commonly-misunderstood statistic. I’ve been trying to understand them better and this is what I’ve learnt. (In this blog I explained p-values and statistical significance and recommend reading that first.) How do we create confidence intervals? We typically use p-values to test the null hypothesis – that there…

  • What do we mean when we talk about a ‘strong relationship’ between two numbers?

    People will often talk about finding ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ relationships between two variables, X and Y. I think this language can be unhelpfully vague and prone to misconception. It could sound like three things:  Sometimes people seem to use this vague language intentionally. It allows them to imply that they have discovered that X causes…

  • What is a p-value? What makes something statistically significant?

    Most people, including me, find it really hard to understand p-values and statistical significance. Even proper scientists struggle to explain it. This blog is my attempt to explain it as clearly as I can, for my own benefit. It’s an iron law of social science that any definition of statistical significance will have at least…

  • What was the impact of Covid-19 measures on crime?

    A new systematic review is out on the impact of Covid-19 measures on crime. Lockdown was perhaps the most drastic crime prevention measure ever taken – what was its impact? Here’s the abstract: COVID-19 caused a great burden on the healthcare system and led to lockdown measures across the globe. These measures are likely to…

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