The Radical Statistics Conference, Statistics to Inform Radical Change, will be held in central London on 24th February, 2024, followed by the Annual General Meeting – all welcome! Register in advance or on the door.
With lunch and social events – join us!
Contents of this Issue
There are three papers in issue 135. John Bibby’s appreciation of a long-standing Radical Statistics member and activist; Janet Shapiro. This is followed by a powerful empirical paper by Frank Houghton et al, on data suppression around maternal mortality in Idaho, USA. Finally, Simeon Scott and Mark Dunkerley present a critical examination of the interplay between money, markets and inequality, a paper they first presented at the Sheffield Radical Statistics conference in March 2023.
RadStats Journal / Newsletter
The Radical Statistics editorial team has expanded but is still in search of people to help in terms of reviewing submitted articles or interesting books. The future of the RadStats journal is dependent on submissions from members and other interested parties. Since the Sheffield conference, we have seen a reasonable upturn in the number of papers submitted, and hope that this trend continues. If you have written something that you think would interest Radical Statistics, please consider submitting.
Getting Involved
The RadStats group is as strong as its membership and we welcome offers of help. If you are interested in becoming involved with the journal, a future conference or event (RadStats turns 50 in 2024) or have other ideas to advance the Radical Statistics aim of building a more free, democratic, and egalitarian society, please contact editors@radstats.org.uk.
RadStats are particularly concerned about
“We believe that statistics can be used to support radical campaigns for progressive social change. Statistics should inform, not drive policies. Social problems should not be disguised by technical language.”
Administrative Issues
Please make sure you have updated your subscription, or make a donation! – by going to www.radstats.org.uk/membership/ where you can pay by cheque, standing order or PayPal.
Editorial Team (editors@radstats.org.uk)
Sean DEMACK, Bob JEFFERY
Please email if interested in joining this team.
Review Editor
Irina MOTOC
Contents of this Issue
In this, relatively short
, issue we have two very interesting articles. The first by Chris Tofallis, Thomas Dunk and Neil Spencer from Hertfohttp://journal/issue133rdshire, after a forensic analysis of what MPs should be doing, focuses on constructing a ‘League Table’ of MPs performance in Parliament based on speeches made, written questions submitted and votes attended. The second by Manjinder Jagdev is another forensic examination of how racism permeated the national curricula for primary and secondary schools and how to get rid of it. Because of a an internal mix-up, we have to profusely apologise to both sets of authors, as these articles should have been in RSN 132. Nevertheless, we think that both articles, and especially the first, will have increased interest because of the current chaos in the British government.
Prospects for RSN 134
We are in the very rare position of having two papers already for RSN134 which will come out before the Sheffield Conference in February, one of them following on from the virtual conference that was hosted by the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne on the theme of ‘Taxing Wealth, Reducing Inequality’, held on Saturday 26th February. We- the editors – will be pursuing the other presenters at that conference relentlessly in the next couple of weeks. Our new Review Editor, Irina Motoc, also has several books for review, and is looking for volunteers.
Administrative Issues
Please make sure you have updated your subscription, or make a donation! – by going to www.radstats.org.uk/membership/ where you can pay by cheque, standing order, PayPal – see p.47.
Editors
Roy CARR-HILL
Sean DEMACK
Review Editor
Irina MOTOC
Contents of this Issue
In this, relatively short, issue 132 we have two very interesting articles, both based on papers ‘delivered’ at the virtual conference that was hosted by the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne on the theme of ‘Taxing Wealth, Reducing Inequality’, held on Saturday 26th February 2022. John Bibby extrapolates Ten Commandments for fiscal and statistical literacy and Stewart Lansley documents how the post-WWII advances of the Atlee government have been nearly all wiped out since 1970. In addition, this editor [Roy Carr-Hill] has included a letter that he has just sent to the Lancet which might amuse those readers who work in the health area.
Prospects for RSN 133
We have no proposed articles for the next issue; but we shall be pursuing the other presenters relentlessly. Our new Review Editor, Irina Motoc, also has several books for review, and is looking for volunteers.
Administrative Issues
Readers may notice this has appeared only 3 months after RSN 133. We are now aiming to produce four shorter (max 50 pages to save on postage) issues rather than three per year. There were tentative plans for a mid-year meeting in 2022 but as yet there are no details.
Please make sure you have updated your subscription, or make a donation! – by going to www.radstats.org.uk/membership/ where you can pay by cheque, standing order, PayPal – or by filling in your details on page 45.
Editors
Roy CARR-HILL
Sean DEMACK
Review Editor
Irina MOTOC
50% off, until Sunday 17 January, from Policy Press.
https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/data-in-society
Following on from the discussions at the London Conference in February 2020, I asked contributors if they would agree to a student converting their power-point presentations into short texts. This has again been partly successful this year. We did manage to get
two of the presentations at the 2021 Conference – those of Mike Sandys and Andrei Morgan – converted to text and these are the first two articles in this issue. The third article is an independent contribution by Bache and Burns on Student Loneliness. The final piece is a review by Simeon Scott of two statistical books. View issue 130.
Prospects for RSN 131
We have at least one article promised for RSN 131, but, clearly, we are going to need more and our administrator will put out a call for contributions to the List.
Another proposal for generating material was the relatively recent publication of the third RadStats compendium, Data in Society, which was presented by the books’ editors in 2020. It is a landmark publication, bringing together many of the crucial issues around the production and use of quantitative information.
The contributors to Data in Society summarise many of the concerns around the accessibility and use of statistics in contemporary society. Examples include the lack of data from banking and financial organisations hides the extent of tax evasion of taxation. Government agencies are reducing the number of data series they make available for public scrutiny. The number of healthcare treatments in Britain provided by private groups is growing steadily.
The book is an eye-opener on the difficulties in holding governments and large organisations to account. Do you agree with the authors’ interpretations?
As the editors acknowledge there are data topics the volume does not cover in detail. These include the use of statistics by legal practitioners, housing and homelessness data and climate change data.
The editors of the RadStats journal have been planning to devote one journal issue to topics raised by Data in Society, and to topics not discussed in the book. Could you write an article for the journal on any of the topics above? Are there are areas of debate missing from Data in Society?
Administrative Issues
The 2022 Conference and AGM will take place on Saturday, 26 February. Radstats has a tentative booking for the day – and probably a bit extra – at the Newcastle Lit & Phil. The Conference will be either in-person OR virtual. If virtual, there would still be preparation and ongoing costs. We would ask for a donation; the suggested amount is £20, however all smaller donations will help cover the costs. Watch for more information soon! To get involved, please contact conf22@radstats.org.uk or the Troika, at troika@radstats.org.uk.
At the 2020 AGM a decision was approved to raise the subscription from £25 to £35 for those wishing to continue to receive print copies (whilst the membership subscription only – with online access – would remain at £25 and £10 for those on low incomes); otherwise they would be taken off the print distribution list.
Make sure you have updated your subscription, and please consider a one-off or regular donation.
See radstats.org.uk/membership where you can pay by cheque, standing order or PayPal.
Following on from the discussions at the London Conference in February
2020, I asked contributors if they would agree to a student
converting their power-point presentations into short texts. This was
partly successful that year and also this year, although they will both be in the next issue.
The first article is the paper presented by Sally Ruane at the Conference. The second article is by the author, making a few comparisons with previous pandemics and also demonstrating the difference in portrayal of the ‘League Table’ by Death Rates as distinct from Number of Cases. The third article is a tour de force by Sean Demack on pupil segregation in England; and the final short piece is by John Bibby on a variant of Stigler’s dilemma.
We have two articles ready, which have been converted from presentations
into papers with the help of an ex-student but, clearly, we are
going to have to rely on further contributions from the 2021 Conference
and/or anonymous or encouraged contributions.
We are still waiting for follow-ups to the relatively recent publication
of the third RadStats compendium, Data in Society, which was presented
by the books’ editors on Saturday 28th 2020. It is a landmark
publication, bringing together many of the crucial issues around the
production and use of quantitative information.
The contributors to Data in Society summarise many of the concerns
around the accessibility and use of statistics in contemporary society.
Examples include the lack of data from banking and financial
organisations hides the extent of tax evasion of taxation. Government
agencies are reducing the number of data series they make available
for public scrutiny. The number of healthcare treatments in Britain
provided by private groups is growing steadily.
The book is an eye-opener on the difficulties in holding governments
and large organisations to account. Do you agree with the authors’
interpretations?
As the editors acknowledge there are data topics the volume does not
cover in detail. These include the use of statistics by legal practitioners,
housing and homelessness data and climate change data.
The editors of the RadStats journal have been planning to devote one
journal issue to topics raised by Data in Society, and to topics not
discussed in the book. Could you write an article for the journal on
any of the topics above? Are there are areas of debate missing from
Data in Society? For example, is anyone prepared to comment on
the statistical inequalities arising out of the impact of the COVID-19
pandemic?
As the Administrator informed those receiving printed copies of the
issue that, at the AGM held in London at the end of February 2020,
the decision was taken to raise the subscription from £25 to £35 for
those wishing to continue to receive printed copies (whilst the membership
subscription only – with online access – would remain at £25
for those £10 for those on low incomes), otherwise they would be
taken off the distribution list which originally includes all 300+ members.
Please make sure you have updated your subscription, or make a
donation! – by going to www.radstats.org.uk/membership/ where
you can pay by cheque, standing order, PayPal – or by filling in your
details on page 52.
Please see the Conference page for a link to speaker presentations as in the programme of Learning from the Past to Build a Better Future on 28 February, 2020, plus a link to the Annual General Meeting notes and reports on 29 February.
-Radstats Web Editor, Robin Rice
2020, London: “Learning from the Past to Build a Better Future”
Friday 28th & Saturday 29th February, 2020
Radical Statistics 46th annual conference will take place at
St Luke’s Community Centre, 90 Central St, London EC1V 8AJ.
Register on Eventbrite.
On Saturday, 29th at the same location Radical Statistics will hold its AGM, discussion about Data in Society, and an extended discussion on the future of Radstats, as we approach our 50th year. All welcome.