Nate Silver’s success in predicting the winner of the US election symbolises a generational shift in political analysis, from qualitative to quantitative, rendering an intermediate class of skilled labour obsolete. It is a shift already seen in other fields, such as finance. Read more
The rate at which Britons are living into very old age is rising much more slowly than had been forecast only two years ago, a blow for those hoping for a very long life but good news for pension providers and the Treasury which spend hefty sums on the oldest old.
The numbers of those aged 85 to 89 are about 2 per cent lower than had been forecast in 2010 while the number of those over the age of 90 is some 15 per cent lower than expected, according to analysis of 2011 census data published in July.
The findings suggest that projections in recent years for increased life-expectancy among Britons may have been overdone – with potentially big implications for public policy and the long-term fiscal outlook.
“This means that life expectancy at age 65 should be slightly lower,” said Richard Willets, head of longevity at Friends Life, the life assurance provider, who spotted the discrepancy between 2011 census data and previous demographic projections.
By guest contributor Paul Hodges
I suggested in an earlier post that chemical prices were an excellent leading indicator for the health of the global economy. The data highlighted that firms were finding it difficult to pass through crude oil related price increases. In turn, this was a warning that both the global and Chinese economies might be slowing faster than generally supposed. This caution since seems to have been amply justified.
Thus a new initiative by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) deserves watching. The ACC is the trade body for the US chemical industry, and it has developed a new Chemicals Activity Barometer which aims to provide early warning of changes in the wider US economy.
The advent of big data is forcing visualisation on companies big and small
Some prodigiously talented individuals – such as the Indian mathematician Ramanujan, for example – have always able to extract meaning from vast arrays of data. Everyone else needs pictures.
Stephen Few, whose book Show me the Numbers* is the bible for visualisation specialists, puts it like this: “It’s almost impossible to spot and make sense of patterns without pictures. Patterns that remain hidden in a table of numbers are made visible by the right visualisation. Most models of abstract information work best with simple 2D visualisations that can be viewed and manipulated on a computer.”
The advent of big data as the product of modern business intelligence systems is forcing visualisation on companies big and small.
By Jason Abbruzzese
Who will you (or would you) vote for in the 2012 presidential election? Now let’s say you have $10 to bet on a winner of the election. Is the answer the same?
Maybe, maybe not. What matters is that those are two different questions, and the results from the answers give us two very different sets of data. Polling has long been used as an implicit indicator of the likelihood of a certain outcome.
(AP) President Harry S. Truman holds up an Election Day edition of the Chicago Daily Tribune, which, based on early results, mistakenly announced "Dewey Defeats Truman" on Nov. 4, 1948.
So polling is not perfect, but what’s the alternative? For people looking to hedge positions against the likelihood of one president over another, the wisdom of the market could be one answer.
The University of Iowa’s predictive markets, specifically the Iowa Electronic Markets 2012 Presidential Election Winner Take All contracts, (IEM) is one attempt to measure it.
The IEM is a futures market in which people can take positions based on certain outcomes. In this blog series we’ll be comparing the Real Clear Politics poll and the IEM Winner Take All to see how they deviate – or converge. Read more
Some renewed interest in this perennial surprise fact, which apparently busts national stereotyping WIDE OPEN – the diligent Greeks work more (average 2109 hours/year) than the OECD average (1749 hours/year), second only to the South Koreans. And the idle Germans are among the lowest (1419 hours a year).
Amazing? Not really. These numbers clump together part-time and full-time workers, and Greece has proportionately more full-timers than part-timers (89.8%) compared with the OECD average (84.4%), which bumps up the number.
The thing is: a relatively small share of Greeks do paid work or look for it, particularly women, who are more likely to work part-time. Poking around the OECD database, it turns out that in 2007, before the crisis, 43.9% of the Greek population were in the labour force, against the G7 average of 50.3%. And they retire early: in 2007, 53.3% of Greeks aged 55-59 were employed, against the OECD average of 63.2%.
A better measure of labour supply is average hours per person of working age in the whole population. This chart is cribbed from an IMF report: data are from 2002, but the numbers underlying them haven’t changed much since then. Greece (GRC) is in the lower half. (BTW look at Germany almost at the bottom: Germany’s super-high labour productivity means they can work fewer hours and still be rich, the cunning fiends.)
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Kate Allen works in the editorial statistics team in London. She previously specialised in housing data reporting for a national trade magazine.
Chris Cook works in the FT's comment team. After joining the FT in 2008 as a Peter Martin Fellow, he worked for two years as a leader writer and then as education correspondent.
Emily Cadman joined the FT in 2010 and is head of the interactive desk.
Martin Stabe works on the FT's interactive team, specialising in databases for interactive graphics.
Keith Fray heads the editorial statistics team, providing data for articles and graphics. His background is in economics, studying at Birkbeck College, London.
Norma Cohen is the FT's Demography Correspondent.
Valentina Romei is a statistical researcher at the FT. She joined the FT in 2008 after working both as an academic and market researcher.
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