Statistics are altogether too bourgeois for the public sector elite

I've been thinking for a while about Graeme Archer's article on how 'getting' statistics is as important as 'getting' Shakespeare yet people still, in that giggling way, exclaim how they were never any good at maths.

There is no “either/or” between words and numbers; at the same time, of course, there is. CP Snow’s two cultures exist, most clearly in the words/numbers dichotomy, but only because we structure them into existence through conscious decisions about how to educate our young. It’s a human choice, not a law of the universe. Good with words or good with numbers is a story we tell about ourselves, and like all stories it has its heroes, and villains.

Now I'm a social scientist (if I'm anything properly academic) who once gloried in the title of Research and Planning Director and I recall a number - see what I did there - of stories about folk dumbfounded by maths and stats. We once prepared an analysis of customer geography for a knitting wool company (sexy, eh!) based on a simple index and had to spend the first twenty minutes of the presentation explaining what indices were. And when I did my 'Research Methods' module for my MSc, we were told to avoid quantitative research because (I summarise) maths is hard and you don't need to do it.

Such is the reality of a world where my personal experience of buying a railway ticket is a better guide to policy than statistics explaining why I am an outlier in buying such an expensive ticket. Or where - as I put it in a debate at last year's Battle of Ideas:

We’d reckon on uplift in response of around 2X or maybe 3X compared to a random selection. Great until you realise that the response to random was around 0.2% - all that clever technology means that, instead of getting ignored by 998 out of 1000 people, you only get ignored by 994.

Only the 2X or 3X gets reported not the actual numbers even though they tell us we needn't fret so much.

Statistics matter yet the extent to which we understand them or appreciate them is troubling. I recall being told - in very definite terms - that my comments on the relative poverty line were wrong because I was using the median household income not the mean and "median isn't an average". This is despite the fact that median is the right measure where there's a lower bound (i.e. you can't have a negative household income - which might come as a surprise to bankrupts).

The thing with Graeme's article, however, is not that people don't know enough maths and statistics but that they are proud of this fact. And, you know, I might have just found a little glimpse at the reasons why this is the case - numbers, counting, accounting are terribly bourgeois things. Here's a chunk from a chapter in Deirdre McCloskey's Bourgeois Equality (the chapter is entitled 'Aristocrats Scorned Measurement'):

In England before its bourgeois time Roman numerals prevailed. Shakespeare's opening chorus in Henry V...apologises for showing battles without Cecil B. DeMillean numbers of extras: yet "a crooked figure may/ Attest in little place a million/ And let us, ciphers to this great accompt, / On your imaginary forces work." The crooked figure he has in mind is not Arabic "1,000,000" but merely a scrawled Roman M with a bar over it to signify "multiplied by 1,000": 1,000 times 1,000 is a million.

McCloskey - like Graeme Archer - quotes Samuel Johnson (albeit a different reference):

"To count is a modern practice, the ancient method was to guess; and when numbers are guessed they are always magnified."

And that modernity was, in Johnson's time, the advent of Bourgeois England - Capitalist England (although McCloskey would be cross at the sloppiness of this latter designation). Before this time, accounting was a grubby thing of merchants, pursers and bursers not something the great and good should be bothered with. Indeed, McCloskey goes on to note that, prior to 1803, students arriving at Yale were expected to be fluent in Latin and Greek but not to be qualified in arithmetic. Such mundane things as statistics were beneath such grand folk.

We appear to have come full circle with quoting poetry and qualitative (for which, usually, read anecdotal) analysis given greater credence than any sort of proper measurement, analysis and appraisal based on statistics, probabilities and other scary number-crunching things. As Simon Jenkins disdainfully put it (when it seemed his basic statistical knowledge was found wanting):

I seriously doubt this poll, since it implies that two-thirds did know the answers. All on whom I tested it failed, including myself. Nor could they see the point. With one voice they replied: “That’s the sort of thing you learned at school.” So what is the point?

What were the sorts of question? Calculating the mean, median and mode - terms used every day in the Guardian where Jenkins writes. The area of a circle. And even long division and multiplication. Not even GCSE maths, not much advanced on what we'd like an eleven year old to know. We don't need to know this stuff, say the bookish elite, it's smelly maths.

Yet how can you know whether government policies - reducing poverty, improving health and so forth - are effective if you've no idea how the things we're reducing or improving are measured? I'll tell you how - we use anecdote, stories. So, rather than look at the statistics we relate the tale of someone's grandma or how a single mum is struggling on benefits. We sometimes gather together several of such stories and embellish them with commentary from 'experts' relating their own understanding based on further anecdote - or 'qualitative research' as they like to call it.

Statistics, maths, measurement, accounting, calculation - these are the tools of the capitalist, the merchant, the city trader. Thing to be disdained and dismissed in favour of our, often pre-judged, opinion founded on at best a reasoned assessment but more commonly on a collection of tales. We might then hold our noses and wander into the world of maths seeking out some numbers that seem to match what we've found from our tales. People compare apples with pears, use percentages when the numbers are too small for this to make sense, and calculate means when the bounds make the mean meaningless. Journalists - often with the title Science Editor or Health Correspondent - present headlines that bear no relationship to the research they report on. Not because they want to mislead but because they've no idea what 'statistical significance' means let alone what a p value is.

Hardly a day passes without us witnessing people in powerful and influential positions dismissing the evidence of statistics in favour of anecdote and conjecture. And, so long as people can respond by quoting Disraeli - lies, damned lies and statistics - without being laughed at, there is little chance that we'll see the proper use of measurement in the formulation of public policy. Meanwhile, out in the world of markets, capitalism, trade and investment, people have no choice but to use measurement and statistics, without them they would fail. For the public sector elite, however, such concerns are just too bourgeois and instead they make policy inspired by stories in the Guardian or Daily Mail.

.....

Why existing infrastructure is more important than new infrastructure

I like John Sanphillippo's perambulations around suburban USA. We spend too much time looking at big cities with their skyscrapers, trams or tube systems and air pollution. Suburbia is really important and undervalued by planners - it's true to say we probably need more of it.

Anyway Sanphillippo makes this telling observation about US land use:

After several years of traveling around the country in the presence of city planners, economic development officials, elected representatives, engineers, production home builders, professional consultants, and groups of concerned citizens I’ve come to my own personal unified theory of America’s land use future. The short version is that we’ve got the built environment that we have and the overwhelming majority of it isn’t ever going to change much. If you want to know what things will look like in thirty or forty years… look around. That’s pretty much it.

Sanphillippo then goes on to observe that, for much of America, the big challenge will be looking after this infrastructure - roads, sewers, water supply - as much as it will be about new infrastructure. For Europe, with largely privatised utility suppliers there's less of a problem (if you want to see the case for a privatised water supply system look at the tragedy of Flint, Michigan) but we can see glimpses of the issue with the underinvestment in our road system. Indeed the contrast between the investment in maintaining rail systems and road systems is striking especially given the dominance of roads in transportation and their poor safety record compared to rail.

The public policy mistake is to focus on the excitement of new infrastructure like HS2 rather than on looking after the existing networks. Sanphillippo's point tells us this is the wrong approach and that we should be seeking to make more efficient use of exisitng systems for the very straightforward reason that those existing systems will make up 95% or more of any future system.

A final observation is that the coming transportation revolution - digital, driverless, drones and so forth - has to fit into the existing network as there isn't the time, capacity or cash to make the changes to public infrastructure. This is a challenge for those developing these new transport technologies and also a reason why places with less of those legacy systems such as Africa start the revolution with an advantage.

....

If you want to control something you need its right name - a problem with poverty and inequality

"Now you know the Rules of Names already, children. There are two, and they're the same on every island in the world. What's one of them?"

So said the teacher in Ursula Le Guin's short story "The Rule of Names" as she explained how knowing something or someone's true name gave power over them. And there is truth in this if we but look - if we describe something other than as its true nature then the resulting policies and strategies will be misplaced and will likely fail.

I've said again and again that we need to talk about poverty. About how, in a land of abundance, there are some who really go go without things we'd all consider essential. If we are to look seriously at our welfare state and ask about its effectiveness then it is this simple fact - people going without - that tells us the system doesn't work. This is not to say that the system is, as too much rhetoric wants to suggest, set so these people go without because it isn't. But it remains a terrible truth that a system designed to deliver care and support fails a lot of people who it was designed to assist.

I watched a presentation from some housing officers about the simple economics of life for these people who stumble through the torn and badly repaired safety net of welfare. Set out in stark numbers was the reality of the trap such people are living in - a spiral of dependence, debt, ill-health and ignorance. A world where getting a job can make matters worse not better, where the short-term loan quickly becomes a loan shark and where a bewildering array of 'agencies' and 'key workers' creates more confusion than they clear and more trouble than they solve.

Now I don't know precisely what should be done for these people - there's a short-term fix involving making sure they get food on the table, medical support and a house they can afford to heat and light. But there's a longer term fix needed which is about employment, education and health. There isn't a magic wand to wave, we've demonstrated that the poor gain little from expensive government programmes and that the welfare system, no matter how we tinker with it, also provides a hit-and-miss kind of respite.

I've said all this - and I mean it too. But none of it is about the headlines, infographics, data-laden tomes and think-tank reports of the 'poverty' industry. Or rather to correctly name that collective of researchers, charities, academics bodies and Labour MPs - the 'inequality industry'. And it is here that the problem is found. We're told repeatedly that the problem is 'inequality' giving us the impression that poverty and inequality are interchangeable terms meaning essentially the same thing.

Throughout my life - or the politically-aware part of it, at least - the left, in its many manifestations, has wrapped itself in the mantle of caring for the poor and that concern has made us all aware of these issues. But today the left has stopped and instead concerns itself with the non-problem of inequality, with the idea that our problems stem from the fact that one man has more stuff or more income than another man. And this obsessing with inequality has meant that the attention has shifted from the question of helping those people going without to the question of how much another group - 'the rich', 'the 1%', 'the elite' - has.

At a Bradford Health and Well-being Board meeting not so long back, I made the observation that many of Bradford's health challenges derive from poverty and their solution lies in reducing that poverty. The Chairman, and Leader of Bradford Council, chose to agree except that his response talked about 'health inequalities' rather than 'ill-health that results from poverty' - these are not the same thing at all yet we are moving inexorably to a strategy based on health inequality, a strategy that simply won't work because it is responding to the wrong thing - to difference rather than lack.

I do not lay claim to a policy or strategy that would eliminate poverty. Indeed, the nature of poverty is that the reasons for it are many and varied, not simply some failure of system but also a consequence of human frailty, inadequacy and foolishness. But I do know that if we continue to call 'poverty' by the name 'inequality' our policies will not have the desired effect. If we want to resolve, reduce or control poverty then we must begin by seeing poverty and not something else as the problem. And this isn't just a question of arcane ideology but a choice that, if we name the problem wrongly, will result in more poverty even while we claim less inequality.

....

Happy Days!

Until a couple of days ago I was happy.

Happy in the knowledge that my Government intended to base its policy prescriptions on an objective assessment of the economy, the environment and social circumstances. Assessments that – while open to challenge – have the merit of being about tangible things like money, jobs, pollution and illness.

But now it seems – in a fit of nonsense – my Government has decided that all these carefully set, often sophisticated measures are not the thing. Instead we’re going to base policy decisions on measuring happiness. And we’re going to base that measurement on a clever appraisal of behavioural indicators, psychometric models and statisical analysis?

Er…no. We’re just going to ask people how happy they are. Four times a year.

That’s it.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m largely in favour of happiness – or at least its pusuit. But I wonder about the objectivity of happiness measures for a load of different reasons – some philosophical, some moral and some operational.

I guess we should start with the philosophical and moral questions – what is happiness. OK so I know some of those clever psychologists think that happiness is a physiological state and therefore nothing to do with philosophy, let alone metaphysics.

Scientists have observed common physical side effects of happiness. From brain waves, to hormone levels, to heart rate and blood pressure, happiness carries markers in the body.

But note that these are “physical side effects” – all the clever psychologists can tell you is that when you’re happy we can detect these side effects. That doesn’t begin to tell us what we mean by happiness.

The concept of happiness – and its importance can be traced back to Plato:

The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depends upon himself and not upon other men has adopted the very best plan for living happily. This is the man of moderstion, of manly character and of wisdom

Plato saw well-being as a central element in society and more significantly that happiness is a consequence of justice and that it was not the result of hedonistic indulgence. Thus:

The descriptions of the pleasure seeking nature of democratic individuals and the just man, who pursues a balanced and harmonious lifestyle, not surrendering himself to ‘savage and unreasoning pleasure’ show that Plato’s view was that pursuit of happiness and pleasure for its own sake leads only to injustice and enslavement.

It seems to me that this rejection of pleasure as a source of well-being is reflected in the proposals we now see to measure happiness. And therefore, that this happiness cannot be addressed through panem et circenses but must be addressed through the superior class putting in place laws, systems and measures that promote well-being. This might be expressed in the manner of Bentham and Mill:

Yet it may still in the end be the case that his (Bentham’s) most persistent and consistent concerns lay neither in ethics nor in politics but in government. He believed that efficiency, order, rationality, system, when developed and sustained in the business of government, administration and judicature, would produce better societies for human beings to live in.

Thus the pursuit of happiness was, for these utilitarians, a matter for government rather than for the individual. The purpose of government is “the greatest happiness for the greatest number” whether they like it or not. This is the type of government that sees the banning of minority interests to serve a perceived wider interest as just.

The idea of government endorsed happiness is an elitist and deeply reactionary concept that derives from an authoritarian conception of government’s purpose.

Which rather brings us – my apologies for this being at something of a canter – to the modern day idea of ‘well-being’ or happiness. And we find that modern proponents of ‘happiness economics’ remain at heart utilitarian. Here’s Richard Layard:

The need is pretty obvious, but one fact makes it absolutely essential. People in the West have got no happier in the last 50 years. They have become much richer, they work much less, they have longer holidays, they travel more, they live longer, and they are healthier. But they are no happier.

Note that we're not told we are less happy - merely that progress is pointless as it does not make us more happy. Because of this Prof. Layard and others argue that the entire basis of our policy-making must be changed. Away from the enlightenment settlement – the idea of human progress through adventure – to an earlier idea of stabilily. An idea more akin to the work of Hobbes (and indeed back to Plato’s ‘guardians’) where we see that submission to authority is a prerequisite of ‘contentment’. We know our place in the order of things.

So much for the philosophical and moral questions although I find the appeal to authority implicit in Layard’s work somewhat disheartening – even, dare I say it, depressing – we should not be surprised that successive governments under the leadership of Britain’s ‘guardian’ class are attracted by the idea of directing the happiness of hoi poloi. Suffice it to say that the concept derives from authoritarian approaches to rule rather than to the idea of liberty and human progress. A concept I find to be without moral justice.

Indeed, the happiness beloved of the utilitarians, Hobbesians and modern day Platonists isn't the excitement of achivement - the joy of 'Eureka' - but the contentment of a gentle boat ride down the river. The aim is too eliminate stress and promote a form of benign comfort - a slippers and comfy chair kind of world. There is no room for 'grit in the shoe', for the little irritations that drive innovation. We must accept our place, be content with our lot.

These gurus of happiness do not want anger, challenge, debate and annoyance as these things are stressful - they undermine 'well-being'. We are to be gentled - made docile by our masters' policies. Resistance will be punished to serve the 'happiness' of fifty plus one. And it sounds so pleasant, so lulling:

"Wellbeing can't be measured by money or traded in markets. It's about the beauty of our surroundings, the quality of our culture and, above all, the strength of our relationships. Improving our society's sense of wellbeing is, I believe, the central political challenge of our times."

I think, Mr Cameron, you should have stopped after the first four words in that statement!

Happiness doesn't seem to relate directly to anything that public policy actions address. We could argue just as much that the relentless increase in taxation and state control is driving unhappiness as we can that it is misdirected economic policy. In truth:

"...happiness research cannot be used to justify government intervention in the way its proponents suggest. Those who would wish governments to take into account measures of wellbeing when setting policy often point to the fact that increases in income have not lead to increases in measured happiness, and thus governments should concentrate on redistribution and improving the quality of life, rather than on allowing people to benefit from economic growth. In fact, measured happiness does not appear to be related to public spending, violent crime, property crime, sexual equality, disability, life expectancy or unemployment either. The stark fact is that the difficulties in measuring society's happiness are insurmountable, and policymakers should not claim that they can control and increase happiness through public policy decisions."

My concern, more than anything else, is that 'gross national happiness' will prove to be a justification for more rules, more controls and more intervention in our lives. All for the greater good, you understand. Another excuse for those ever more forceful nudges.

And at the end of it?

We won't be any happier.

....

How much a footballer - or a cleaner - is paid is none of the Government's business whatever Polly Toynbee and the BBC might say.

****

In recent weeks I’ve written about the nonsense that is the labour theory of value including this observation:

In the final analysis something is worth what it’s worth – the value is determined by consumption not by production.

And, in order to demonstrate how allowing a guild system to dominate, I have observed that people (in the UK, at least, but probably everywhere else too) become doctors because it’s a very well-paid job. I know there are people who talk of their altruistic motives in donning the white coat – but would they do it without being in the top 1% of earners?

The BBC – in their leftie manner – has been asking about the matter of pay (and in the round levels of taxation). On the radio we got the delightful Polly – millionairess, ex-public schoolgirl, villa-owning champion of the poor and downtrodden. I note that she has not – in the manner of Dave Nellist – given away all her earnings so as to live on a ‘worker’s wage’. But that’s most socialists for you – do as I say not as I do.

I am however fascinated by the manner in which the debate about pay is couched. There are – it appears – three primary populist measures: the pay of the prime minister; how much premiership football players get in wages; and bankers’ bonuses. All other considerations – including the sensible and proper analysis of income levels and their impact on society – have to be seen through the prism of these measures.

Thus the wages of a local council chief executive are compared to the PM’s pay – not to a more fair comparison of the heads of the civil service (all of whom earn more than the prime minister). The proper comparison with the PM is what a council leader is paid not what the chief executive is paid – and here, whatever we might think about the remuneration of councillors, the PM comes out pretty favourably.

At the same time we have to go through the ritual about footballers – how their pay is ‘obscene’, how it is ‘destroying the game’ and often how the government should intervene. Again, we fail to ask whether the world-wide popularity of English football is the real reason for high wages. And why we should, in fact, welcome the fact that most of the cash we pay to watch, listen to and read about football ends up in the bank accounts of players (and through that in the coffers of the taxman).

The BBC reports were added to by an egregious poll conducted by ComRes – nothing wrong with the manner of the poll’s conduct or the professionalism of that company – but asking the public – without context – how much they think different folk should be paid is both economically illiterates and monumentally immoral. How much you or I – or rich folk like David Beckham or Tony Benn for that matter – earn should not be a matter that is the subject of social control. But heaven knows about the public’s value system anyhow!

The bosses of Britain's top 100 companies should be paid about £118,000 a year, a BBC survey suggests. Those questioned also put the pay of Premier League footballers and financial bond traders at £365,000 and £58,000 respectively.

And when the poll reports that lower paid folk should be paid more this is done without the obvious value statement – how happy will you, dear respondent, be to pay higher taxes, higher prices and have less choice? Not happy – well shut up saying what other folk should be earning then.

In the end we’re paid what we’re worth – or, in the case of doctors, teachers, bankers and lawyers, what we can screw from a market that the stupid government has given us control over. Yet the terms of the debate are conducted on the assumption that there is some morally justified public policy intervention in levels of pay – and especially pay of senior and successful people. There isn't.

....

Dave, Gordon, Nick - can you stop hanging around ivory towers and think for yourselves please

My good friend – now sadly dead – Julian Cummins used to say that 90% of utterly brilliant ideas do not stand scrutiny by someone who knows you well. Julian – who did have the serious flaw of being a Liberal Democrat but I shall brush past that – knew that we can get terribly excited about some whizzo spiffing wheeze only to realise later that it was really really stupid.

So it is with political proposals. One of those terribly clever chaps (they do seem always to be chaps for some reason) from Demos or res publica or IPPR or Reform or policy Exchange or New Economics Foundation produce reports and sling them out at the world from the highest point of their ivory towers. And scrabbling around at the foot of these towers are the political advisors, public affairs consultants, directors of advocacy and policy, assorted pundits and scurvy bloggers. Grabbing these gems of wisdom from these great gurus, folk scurry off to their political masters, to the airwaves and to the presses and explain how the wonderfully brainy bloke from this or that think tank has shown us how to bring about world peace, make the deserts bloom and cure the common cold.

In recent times we have had salvation through

a twenty-one hour week

allowing public officials to take over the services they deliver

recruiting a vast army of busybodies

building super-duper railway lines at great expense

bribing people to get married

banning smoking in cars

moving all the bureaucrats out of London

getting all the Northerners to move South

the lifecycle approach to ‘civic service’

Most of the proposals churned out from these ivory towers do not bear close scrutiny – they represent the triumph of intellectual willy-wagging over common sense, the abrogation of our responsibility to think for ourselves to a handful of professional thinkers and the easy research option of either questionable statistical analysis or else the total replacing of quantifiable experiment with qualitative enquiry. The last of the list above – presented as a source of policy direction in the development of citizenship describes its methodology:

"The report's arguments comes (sic) from a review of the existing evidence, a deliberative democracy event with 54 young people held in September 2009 and a series of expert interviews."

This isn’t research it’s the presentation of opinion as research – no hypotheses are proposed and tested, an ideological position is adopted from the outset and the resulting policy proposals have as much basis in truth as saying that we have to cover our heads to stop the sky pixie zapping us with his lightning bolts. And what is worse about this is that politicians, senior officials and even business leaders now simply take this pseudo-research as gospel, without consideration and without thought (so long as the ideological badge of the think tank matches).

So here’s a proposal from The View from Cullingworth – shut down all the think tanks, close all the policy departments, sling out all the special advisors. And make the politicians, permanent secretaries, chief executives and other well-paid senior people think for themselves for a change.

...

Let's not give God - or his supposed agents - a special position in our policy-making

Since its Sunday I thought I’d write about God – or more precisely the idea of “faith groups” in politics and administration. After all, despite the falling numbers of people who practice a recognisable religious faith, more and more attention is now given to the involvement of “faith-based organisations” in our polity – up to and including the delivery of public services to vulnerable people and communities.

The Department for Communities and Local Government published “Communities in Control: Real People, Real Power” in 2008 in which the UK’s 23,000 “faith-based” charities are singled out for particular praise and attention:

“There are over 23,000 religious charities in the UK and many more faith-based organisations, involving tens of thousands of people motivated by their faith, working at a local and national level to provide support and services to communities. At times there has been reluctance on the part of local authorities and agencies to commission services from faith-based groups, in part because of some confusion about the propriety of doing so.”

The Conservative Party is no different seeing faith-based organisations as an important resource for supporting the delivery of wider social policies. And, for all the humanist grumpiness about the religious underpinning of these charities (and we should remember that most of our leading social charities have origins in religion including huge charitable institutions like Barnardos), it is surely right to make use of the commitment and enthusiasm of people with a religious commitment.

For me the problem comes when faith groups – as opposed to “faith-based organisations” – are given a privileged position in the development of policy and where (as is the case in Bradford) that position of influence is paid for with public money. For all the good work done by individuals and groups inspired by religious faith, I fail to see why there can be any justification for giving religions – collectively or individually – a special role in our polity.

If religions want to get together to argue their case (e.g. in promoting the value of denominational schools) that is fine. But they have to join all the rest of the special interests out there trying to influence the public agenda. The time has come to stop local authorities automatically added “faith groups” to the like of stakeholders to involve in the development of policy & strategy. Faith groups should not assume a right to be represented on local strategic partnerships, area forums and regeneration partnerships – they should take their place with the rest of the voluntary sector, with business and with the rest of the “community”.