Evaluation, statistics and OR

Cancer and scare statistics

Well, the World Cancer Research Fund have done their best to make everyone miserable - let's raise a glass to them!  Or more precisely, let's raise a glass of filtered tap water to them as they try to scare us all into being thin and eating healthily.

As you would expect, the BBC have reported the latest research report, and have pulled out for all of us the key messages and what friendly messages they are!  Limit red meat consumption (500g per person per week maximum but burgers are OK - how will Australians survive?), limit alcohol (it will kill you with cancer but might save you from heart disease in moderation), no processed pork products, no weight gain after the age of 21 (BE REAL!), no sugary drinks (including fruit juices!) and breastfeed children (bad luck chaps and the childless).

One of the report's authors says it is all about identifying risk so that individuals are in control of what they do and therefore help to keep that risk under control.

Hmmm - what about the big reason for cancer - smoking?  What about those who suffer cancer because their work place is full of liberated asbestos or they were at a nuclear bomb test site?  What about the two thirds of cancer cases that are not lifestyle related, but are genetic?

According to medical statistics, there are 200,000 new cases of cancer per year in the UK (population c 58 million), of which two thirds will not be lifestyle related.  Readers of "The Tiger That Isn't" will know what questions to ask and what calculations to make at this point.

My issue here is not particularly with those who undertook the study - I am not a medical statistician or an epidemiologist, and that lot have their own lovely sets of stats to play with.  My issue with all this (apart from as a bon viveur - see my other blog - Rural Life) is as someone who writes research reports from time to time.  There is a certain Terry Wogan effect now with surveys, where once the results are released, you get a huge amount of scoffing, a certain amount of resentment if the findings impact on an individual's comfort zone, and then they are regarded as tomorrow's chip paper. 

The scare mongering is actually turning people off from the messages contained in the research.  There is so much conflicting advice now on lifestyle and nutrition, the average and non-average person doesn't know where to turn.  The findings may or may not be valid, but the message delivery leaves an awful lot to be desired, and people resent the nanny state.

A French School in London

Earlier this week the BBC published a report about turning a West London comprehensive school into a bi-lingual school part funded by the French government.  The thinking and offer come from the fact that the school in question is currently not performing as well as it might (only a quarter of pupils gain the benchmark 5 GCSEs at A* to C), while French nationals in London look for provision where their children can follow the French curriculum.

My instant reaction was that this was a brilliant idea.  It solves so many problems in one go.  Children whose culture and first language is French get the chance to follow their national curriculum (including learning philosophy) and take the French Bac - the opening to French higher education and jobs.  A school that is performing not as well as it might becomes the centre of attention and gets extra funding, which should generate a certain Hawthorne effect and improve results.  Hammersmith and Fulham get a showcase school.  English children get a chance to widen their language knowledge.

But thinking on it a bit further, and trying to put my mental clock back to when I was at secondary school - will the children really appreciate this development?  I imagine the French children will, but what about the others?

When I was at school at one stage my parents got really excited about a house in the Dordogne and contemplated moving to France.  That really made me miserable.  While I wasn't the most social of children, I couldn't image leaving our little cottage in Kent, and the woods behind it, and my school, and my friends.  Similarly, any thoughts out of the norm about schooling brought a fear as well - what would I do if I couldn't go to the school I had been mentally preparing myself for over the years.  Finally - being a bit different, learning different things - standing out and being different wasn't the popular thing, and if you were different, you were often miserable.

So will the children of Hammersmith and Fulham think that having a bi-lingual school is the best thing ever (my view as an adult) or will it cause fear, resentment and disaffection?  I really, really hope it works out for all concerned.

Migrant worker reports

So here's a thing - two reports have been published by the Government looking at the impact of migrant workers to the UK.  One focuses on the economic benefits (about £700,000 per day extra output) and that the workers pay more in tax to the system than they take out in services.  The other looks at the social impacts of migrant workers, and in a qualitative manner focuses on the strains that migrant workers are placing on the health, housing, education and justice systems. 

Both reports are covered by the Daily Telegraph and the BBC, but what surprised me, was that the Telegraph focused on the positive side of the argument, while the BBC hardly mentioned the economic benefits, but played up the pressures on service provision.

Neither media source is really being balanced in their reporting, but I was surprised that the BBC chose to focus on the negatives, even when they are supposed to promote social cohesion and education to the population.

The media have been reporting isolated instances where local authorities have emphasised the pressures on services caused by the influx of migrant workers - Slough was a particular cause celebre and I have worked on reports for Wychavon in Worcestershire and for Hertfordshire where there are also issues. 

In Wychavon, it was the first instance noted of the pressures on emergency medical cover, as migrant workers are not aware or face difficulties signing on with GPs.  In Hertfordshire, the key pressures that were noted were on facilities for learning English and the funding for that, with some large employers unwilling to pay for this service.

There is little doubt that migrant workers are taking jobs that we would expect home grown workers to take, however with low numbers of Job Seekers Allowance unemployed, there is a shortage of labour that migrant workers are taking.  In Worcestershire, anecdotal evidence suggests that our own home grown workers do not want to do night shifts, work in hospitality, do work that is a bit physical or is perceived to be low status.

Personally I say thank you to those migrant workers that have moved to the UK and mean that Stanstead Airport, buses, cafes and other services function well.  I would also remind readers that there is an exodus of UK nationals leaving Britain for Spain, France and Portugal, who do not contribute at all to their economies, but are happy to take advantage of the health systems and subsidised public transport.  Just a thought!

The Tiger That Isn't

This is more of an informal book review than anything, but I feel I have to share my delight at finding a book that helps people to make sense of numbers.  The full detail of the book is "The Tiger That Isn't" with a sub-title of Seeing Through a World of Numbers, by Michael Blastland and Andrew Dilnot, published by Profile Books, in 2007.  It is available through all good book sellers it seems and they did an RSA lecture on it in September.

For anyone who  uses numbers, this is essential reading, particularly (and this is a personal whinge I think) PR people who are writing press releases on anything to do with numbers.  Any journalist should be locked in a room with it until they can recite the whole thing verbatim, and when questioned, can actually interpret what it means.

The concepts are introduced clearly with examples that are easily pictured and examples of abuses that are amusing and thought provoking.  They look at issues of size and magnitude, how things are counted (a particular issue in the world of skills and education), chance, averages, targets and a common topic on this blog site - risk.

One of their examples looks at the risks posed to the health of children by mobile phone use - invisible waves have been a talking point in this blog, so I go back to this unashamedly.  The key being that while research showed a doubling of risk of acoustic neuroma, the question not posed and the information not provided was what was the baseline risk?  In this case, about 1 in 100,000.

Statisticians will generally put caveats on their numbers - I know if I am reporting something that looks a bit dramatic or is based on a small sample, I like to put a confidence interval around it or put a level of certainty on it.  Press releases will often include this information in the technical bits at the bottom that don't get reported (always see if you can find that original press release if you are worried about a report), or even in the technical notes of the report that the press release is about.  It is worth doing that bit of digging to make sure you have understood the numbers being talked about.

The Tiger That Isn't makes this point again and again, by getting the reader to question every number they are presented with - in many ways, this is what real numeracy is about.  Good work chaps and thanks for a great read.

Minimum wage rises

From the 1st October, the UK national minimum wage rises for adults from £5.35 to £5.52.  There will be notices in the press from the Unions saying this is a great thing for their workers, but the rise is not enough.  There will also be notices in the press from employer bodies saying that thousands of businesses will go bust because of it and the rises were calculated in an unfair manner.

I am all for the minimum wage, in that it sets a level with legal sanctions, and gives an employee a right to a wage that is somewhere near fair, however it is sad that it should be needed and also need to be enforced with legal sanction.  In the learning and skills world, the mantra is that the workforce is an organisation's greatest asset.  What do you do with your assets?  You care for them, be that varnishing the windows on your house, polishing your car on a Sunday morning, spending a couple of hours at the beauty parlour on a regular basis, ensuring regular maintenance routines are carried out on machinery, or ensuring that living assets are well fed, kept warm enough and are content.

Paying someone a wage that you would not consider adequate for you or one of your own family does not meet the need to care for your living assets in terms of ensuring they are well fed, adequately housed and content.  If the basic wage is not enough to do this, they will look for work else where or take on a second job.  In the latter instance, you are faced then with workers who are not getting enough time to recuperate between shifts, who are not able to take up learning opportunities, who miss time with their families.

There are all sorts of good economic reasons for not having a minimum wage - not least the arguments about how it might drive inflation.  The free market in all its natural savagery would however destabilise wage rates in certain sectors - most probably hospitality and retail.  To a certain extent that can be seen in the US, where tips make up the majority of a waiter or waitress's wages. 

So human nature seems to dictate that some form of protection is needed for wages, and so we have the annual round of increases.  Remember when you see the CBI and Chamber notices about the difficulties it causes, that for an individual working 37 hours a week, their GROSS pay has gone up from £181.90 per week to £204.24 per week, or on an annualised basis, from £9,459 per year to £10,620.  There will be tax and NI to pay on that before the individual gets to live off the rest - and in the UK at the moment, that is hard.