The UK government pays me to write open source all day
Open source is creeping into government and my area, health, bit by bit (no pun intended!). Alas, the reblogs don’t work in my new self-hosted WordPress. Here’s the link
Survivorship Bias
Not the usual topic of this blog, but a great post and well worth a read. My old reblogs are not working now I’ve self hosted, link here.
Cool graph in 5 seconds
Cool graph in 5 seconds. Open R. Type <pre class="brush: r; title: ; notranslate" title=""> library(rgl) with(mtcars, plot3d(wt, disp, mpg, col="red", size=3)) Spin the graph with your mouse. Cool! (Hat-tip to the mighty Quick-R from whom I stole the code)
What does your maternity leave look like?
Now THIS is a visualisation- the same child photographed at ages corresponding to statutory paid maternity leave in different countries
All Information is Actionable
A brilliant post on the conflict between the needs of analysts and decision makers… with cats! Genius post on a genius blog. Here!
Data in the NHS
I wrote a little piece for an information pack related to the Patient Feedback Challenge so I thought I may as well share it here. I’m a little rushed so I won’t hyperlink the references, apologies for this they are all at the bottom in plain text. NHS data systems are, quite naturally, built around very strict data management systems which emphasise the security of data and ensuring accountability of data loss or misuse.
Unstable net promoter scores
If you work in the NHS you’ll know that the “net promoter score” (aka the friends and family test- “would you recommend this service to family and friends?”) is coming to NHS services, indeed it’s hit the headlines with the coalition government promoting its use in the face of some pretty stiff opposition (e.g. here). I have never been all that convinced by it, particularly the way the score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors (those who would not recommend or unlikely to) from the percentage of promoters (those who would recommend).
Bottom-up creation of data-driven capabilities: show don’t tell
Fantastic post on how interactive analysis can help sell data-driven answers within an organisation. Time will tell if I can achieve similar things. Here!
Shiny app running at last
I’m currently taking part in the NHS Institute for Innovation supported Patient Feedback challenge with colleagues at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust. We’re delivering our patient feedback in a web system and I have been working with the web developers, the lovely people over at Numiko, they’re doing all the web type stuff and I’m writing R code, running over FastRWeb, which is fantastic and will get a well deserved blog post some time soon.
But I do want to be data (cross posted)
I’ve got a guest piece on the Patient Opinion Blog which is cross-posted below. Healthcare scientists will universally recognise the dominance of quantitative methodology over qualitative methodology, with the oft-qutoed hierarchy of evidence featuring such quantitative behemoths as meta-analysis and RCT at the top and qualitative methods further down, rather sniffily described as “Case reports” or “Case series”. As a rather hardcore quantitative scientist myself with a great deal of good feeling towards my qualitative brethren, it was with joy and horror that I read Paul’s recent piece on the Patient Opinion blog “I don’t want to be data, I want a conversation”, which flips the usual dominance relationship on its head and champions qualitative over quantitative methods.