It's All in the Figures!

I believe it's Disraeli who gets the credit for distinguishing between 'lies, damned lies and statistics'.  I wonder sometimes whether this was actually the progression it's usually taken to be, indicating three grades of the same generic untruth, or if it could be interpreted as a contrast between, on the one hand, lies (for emphasis damned lies), and on the other, the mathematical accuracy (and hence truth) of statistics.  My conclusion is that it depends how you read statistics.

Despite passing my maths O-level a year early, and eventually getting top grade at A-level, when I studied statistics at college for six months I found it insuperably baffling.  I part, I blame the teacher, but I think there's general agreement that statistics is a discipline that has built around itself strong bulwarks of confusion, supported by a library of technical terms and structures.  The skilled statistician can produce from the same data a variety of results that, while all true, will convey vastly differing pictures to the layman.  Take for instance, the terms 'average', 'mean' and 'median' ... or maybe not, because this isn't the place and I've already confessed, in effect, that I'm not the best person to make that distinction.  Suffice to say that these three sound to the layman as if they are three words for the same thing, simply progressive in their degree of professionalism, whereas in fact they are, or can be, vastly different assessments of the same basic facts.

Why this sudden academic twist to what is usually a boring diary of a week's work?  Simply that, looked at on paper - or more accurately on the computer screen - it would be easy to say that, having done sixteen jobs this week, compared to ten in each of the two previous weeks and twelve the week before that, it's been a much better week for my bank balance.  In truth there is very little difference between the financial product of the four weeks, since many of these sixteen were short jobs and none of them to places any great distance away.  While the three previous weeks have included Bradford, Runcorn and Livingston, the furthest I went this week was Ramsgate!

After the excitement of the snow, if I'm honest, the return to decent driving conditions, though welcome, has been a bit of an anti-climax.  Along with the gradual lengthening of the days, and the progress of the calendar into February, it's been a reassurance that normality isn't far away, and probably the biggest triumph of the week was a collection in Hastings from a flat that is just far enough off the Old London Road to make it difficult to spot.  I did this pick-up several years ago, and it came to mind when I was given it again this week.  I thought it was in Southampton, but when I looked on Google the previous evening, I recognised the locality, acknowledged my failing memory of the town, but remembered where I would need to park.

The other success came a couple of days later, when I took some ventilation accessories to a site in Ramsgate High Street.  When I arrived, twilight was beginning to set in, and I was a little anxious that the people there might have gone home.  As I pulled up at the gate, someone came down a side alley and asked, "have you brought my grilles?"  I was so pleased, I stopped at a chip shop on the way out of town and treated myself to a celebratory portion of cod and chips before making my way home!

I wonder what treats and excitement next week will bring - no doubt it will appear here too!