Oliver Johnson Profile picture
Jan 27, 2023 8 tweets 6 min read Read on X
One very exciting (if daunting!) thing about Numbercrunch amzn.to/3O9vX6L was having it read by some of my absolute favourite number-focused writers. I'll share their comments in the next few weeks, starting with this from @TimHarford - huge thanks to all of them. "The perfect introduct...
Another Numbercrunch endorsement that I was really happy about was this from @Ananyo, whose own von Neumann biography was the best thing I read last year. Might have to add "maths-whisperer on a mission" to my Twitter bio! "Professor Oliver John...
@Ananyo I've learned a huge amount (both about infectious diseases and about how to write for a general audience) from @adamjkucharski, so I was delighted to be able to send him Numbercrunch and to hear his comments. Numbercrunch shows how to a...
@Ananyo @adamjkucharski Someone who always does a great job explaining things with numbers is @TomChivers, so I was delighted that he liked Numbercrunch. (I now feel bad I didn't write it years ago, but in my defence #NuggsForCarter and That 7-2 Win hadn't happened then). Amazon amzn.to/3O9vX6L Image
I had a great trip to visit @Soccermatics in Uppsala back in 2015 (where does time go?) and his books on maths and the wider world have always been a beacon of clarity to me. David gave me great advice when I first set out to write my own book, so I'm pleased he liked the result! Image
Of course, @d_spiegel is a true hero of the art of bringing numbers and data to life, so I'm extremely proud to be able to pass on his kind words.

(Reminder, Numbercrunch is published in less than 3 weeks' time, on 2nd March, and can be pre-ordered here amzn.to/3O9vX6L) Image
@d_spiegel Finally, if only alphabetically, here's @whippletom (whose own book is out in May, and looks great amazon.co.uk/Battle-Beams-s…)

So that's Numbercrunch. It's published in 2.5 weeks. It's less COVID-y than my stuff here, and has better illustrations and grammar amzn.to/3O9vX6L
And once more, with actual image .. "With barely an equati...

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More from @BristOliver

Sep 2, 2023
Wow, this sounds bad! Better read the article theguardian.com/education/2023…
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Oh, it's nitrates and nitrites. I don't really know how bad that is, I'll follow the link. Ok, so it's "in mice" and 15% of their diet being bacon and sausages. That's going some.
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I wonder where this new data has come from?
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Read 4 tweets
Aug 29, 2023
I know it's bad to dunk on paid blue-ticks to give them engagement they can monetise, but this guy is so egregiously wrong and there's a danger that people with anxiety disorders might believe his "calculations" that I think it's important. Sorry 🧵
I've written a lot about the Russian roulette model - constant chance of Long COVID per infection - and have explained how that doesn't fit with real world data? Well, this guy has stepped it up, and done a similar calculation if the chance goes up with each reinfection.
But we know from ONS data that this is simply untrue. The chance goes down from 1st infection to 2nd infection. Even, very likely, among children as I explained here.
Read 9 tweets
Aug 25, 2023
Can I just talk about this, from a member of @IndependentSage, because it's been kind of annoying me? It essentially comes down to what you mean by "doesn't decrease". Image
And it's true that the ONS do say this: ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…
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However, in my view it's statisticians being cautious, because the same page says that the chance of self-reported Long COVID of any severity is 1.0% on first infection, and 0.6% on second infection - that's a 40% drop!! Image
Read 10 tweets
Mar 23, 2023
Ok, I think this may be me more or less done here, COVID-wise. Having this variant data so easily on hand (thanks in a huge part to @OliasDave and @AlexSelby's processing of it) has made nowcasting an absolute breeze since the start of 2022.
For all the value of the ONS, variant percentages have been pretty much unique lately as a genuinely *leading indicator* - letting us forecast the timing and scale of likely waves with solid confidence two or three weeks before they started (receipts here )
Unfortunately I fear that the result will be a misinformation gap, where the usual suspects can whip up hype about some new "killer variant" and scatter a few local ZOE graphs, and cooler heads won't be able to point at the variant percentages and growth rates to defuse that.
Read 4 tweets
Mar 9, 2023
This is not a quote tweet to dunk on anyone, but I'm unconvinced that ONS (random sampling) is the right model to track prevalence in the really important initial exponential growth phase of a new disease, from a statistical point of view.
Say H5N1 did take over in humans (and goodness knows we hope it doesn't) .. The lowest COVID prevalence that ONS ever estimated in England was 14,000 (late June 2020). But this came with a massive confidence interval (proportionately speaking) from 5,000 to 31,000.
So even if we got to the stage of 14,000 infections at one time (and remember for example we only ever saw 3,500 monkeypox cases *in total* in the UK - and yes OK, cases not infections, apples-oranges) then we'd really be very uncertain about the prevalence still.
Read 6 tweets
Feb 23, 2023
One of the things I talk about in Chapter 2 of Numbercrunch is "orders of magnitude" errors in the media and online. Brief thread of some of my favourites, do please let me know the ones I missed!
Third favourite: This all-time classic, which was one of the things that got me thinking there was a need for this material in the first place.
Second favourite: when in November 2020 Toby Young blew up his own "ItS jUsT LiKe fLu" argument in public, by missing a factor of 10.
Read 5 tweets

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