Where to start? The use of ‘the average’ is possibly the thing that annoys me most in social and policy analysis. Essentially, taking complex distributions and reducing them to a single figure makes any subsequent analysis ridiculous. Political comments about ‘glass ceilings’ and the problem of leave for childcare are based on beliefs that cannot [...]
Entries from October 2006
October 16, 2006
The graduate premium
This takes me back. It’s not just about simplicity, but a case of bad science…
Once upon a time a Labour government wanted to convince us that students should pay for their degrees. But this can only really be justified if having a degree is a private good as opposed to a public good (this sort [...]
October 16, 2006
In the beginning…
By far the easiest way to make a political point stick seems to be to use numbers, how much money or how many people being the most effective. What gets lost in these numbers is the vast amount of background and process that determines how these numbers relate to the reality they are meant to [...]
