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Statistics of the year 2018

By Peter Rowlett. Posted December 18, 2018



The second annual Royal Statistical Society ‘statistics of the year’ have been announced. The Guardian reports that these include top prize for “90.5%, the proportion of plastic waste that has never been recycled”, and that other statistics awarded or commended involve Jaffa Cakes, poverty, gender equality, climate change and someone called Kylie Jenner. The RSS says “the Statistics of the Year aim to show the sometimes surprising stories that numbers can tell us about the world”.


Statistic of the year from the RSS.


Environment, Jaffa Cakes and Kylie Jenner star in statistics of year, at The Guardian.


RSS Stat of the Year

By Katie Steckles. Posted October 1, 2017



The Royal Statistical Society is seeking nominations for the best statistic of 2017 – they’re looking for the “statistics that you think really capture the year so far”. The nomination form (docx) can be downloaded from their website, and their criteria include that it should be accurate, coherent and not misleading, and that it should have a public interest dimension (but it doesn’t need to have already had media attention).

The judging panel is chaired by Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter and includes journalists, statisticians, economists and pollsters. The winning statistic will be unveiled in December.

More information

Stat of the Year, on the RSS Website

Maths Journals for an engaged Sixth Former

By Katie Steckles. Posted November 25, 2016

Maths legend Colin Wright posed this question on Twitter:

Q for my maths tweeps – recommendations wanted for Maths Journals suitable for a bright and engaged Sixth Form student. Suggestions?

— Colin Wright (@ColinTheMathmo) November 24, 2016


It led to a flurry of interesting replies, and here’s some of them.

Statistics events at Conservative and Labour party conferences this autumn

By Peter Rowlett. Posted August 29, 2013

The Royal Statistical Society have announced ‘Show me the data’ events at the Conservative and Labour party conferences this autumn. Each conference will host three meetings relating to “the importance of interpreting and understanding statistics”, run by the RSS with the Alliance for Useful Evidence and Ipsos Mori.

The Royal Statistical Society 2013 honours

By Christian Lawson-Perfect. Posted March 23, 2013

The Royal Statistical Society have announced their honours for 2013. RSSeNews has the list of recipients. The awards will be presented this September here at CP HQ, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Sir John Kingman, the former chairman of the Statistics Commission, was awarded the Guy Medal in Gold. The Guy Medal in Silver went to Brian Ripley for, in addition to his theoretical work, his ‘pivotal role’ in the open-source R environment. There’s more detail and very short citations in the RSSeNews article. Since we don’t have a statistician on staff: can anyone add any detail about any of the recipients?

Read more: Royal Statistical Society’s 2013 honours announced at RSSeNews

Big Data Week

By Katie Steckles. Posted February 15, 2013

Anyone who’s a fan of data and bigness will be pleased to hear that 22-28 April is going to be Big Data Week. This  ‘global festival of data’ will take place in participating cities all over the world, including London, Sydney, Barcelona, Shanghai, Amsterdam, Chicago and Utrecht (we only have a MathsJam in one of those so far, but we’re working on it).

The aim of the week is to allow data scientists to work with businesses from different sectors to take advantage of the bigness of data these days – vast amounts of information collected using new technology, whose potential for future applications is mindblowing. One day we could even assemble a list of every sandwich anyone’s ever eaten. Planned events in Big Data Week will include meetups, networking events, hackathons, debates, discussions and data visualisation demos – and hopefully we’ll come out of it with more infographics than you’ve ever seen.

More information:

A date for the diary: Big Data Week at the Royal Statistical Society Website

Big Data Week official website

Two years in: getstats

By Peter Rowlett. Posted October 21, 2012

Yesterday the Royal Statistical Society/Nuffield Foundation collaboration getstats celebrated its second birthday.

Those of us with long enough memories might recall that getstats, a 10-year statistical literacy campaign, was launched with great fanfare at 8:10pm on World Statistics Day, 20th October 2010 (20:10 20.10.2010). Then-President David Hand was quoted at the time saying

Numbers are everywhere in our lives, and statistics is about turning these numbers into useful information on which we can take action. People need to appreciate the power of statistics as it can be the key to the important choices we make in our lives.