Blog

Modelling

Nov
2019

Do School Performance Tables Really Measure School Performance?

written by Jo Morrison
published on Wed, 20/11/2019

Research published recently by the University of Bristol shows that analysis of school performance results change when pupils' background characteristics are taken into account. Commenting on the study, the Northern Powerhouse says that "league tables punish and reward the wrong schools". This study supports our findings from a previous blog, but also illustrates the importance of carefully considering what is included in a statistical model.

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Jun
2019

Novel Educational Research using Longitudinal Survey Data

written by Jo Morrison
published on Tue, 18/06/2019

A recent article in the Guardian newspaper reports on a study published last month that looks at parents' responses to news from the Ofsted inspection of their child's school. Aside from the eye-catching headline, we found a number of aspects of this study interesting.

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Mar
2019

Restaurant Ratings Model: Visualising the Key Findings

written by Louise Cherrill
published on Fri, 29/03/2019

Recently we were inspired by an article in The Economist that looked at the demographic predictors of voting intention in the 2018 US congressional election. The article used one of our workhorse models, a logistic regression, and it contained a great visualisation of the results. We were keen to use the concept to present our own work.

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Apr
2017

Key Driver Analysis

written by Sarah Littler
published on Sun, 09/04/2017

It’s important to identify and understand the drivers of key business outcomes. You might want to understand which aspects of your service influence how likely a customer will be to recommend you, for example. A so called key driver analysis can be used to address this sort of question.

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May
2016

EU Referendum Polls: Modelling Voting Intention

written by Tom Fricker
published on Tue, 24/05/2016

In our latest blog on the EU referendum we look at fitting a model to the opinion poll results published in the run up to June 23rd. The model highlights how polling companies and practices influence the results and concludes that as of May 24th the probability of the UK remaining in the EU is about 68%.

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Apr
2015

How Do Supermarkets Use Your Data?

written by Lynsey McColl
published on Sat, 04/04/2015

Retailers have been finding more and more sophisticated ways to use customer data to their advantage. By collecting and analysing consumer data, together with other socio-economic data, supermarkets are able to make evidence-based decisions when devising their marketing and operational strategies.

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