UK railway suicides – 2014 update

Posted on April 22, 2015 by anthonycutler

It’s taken me a while to sit down and blog about this news item from October 2014: Sharp Rise in Railway Suicides Say Network Rail . Regular readers of this blog will know that I have followed this data series closely in 2013 and 2012.

The headline was based on the latest UK government data. However, I baulk at the way these things are reported by the press. The news item states as follows.

The number of people who have committed suicide on Britain’s railways in the last year has almost reached 300, Network Rail and the Samaritans have warned. Official figures for 2013-14 show there have already been 279 suicides on the UK’s rail network – the highest number on record and up from 246 in the previous year.

I don’t think it’s helpful to characterise 279 deaths as “almost … 300”, where there is, in any event, no particular significance in the number 300. It arbitrarily conveys the impression that some pivotal threshold is threatened. Further, there is no especial significance in an increase from 246 to 279 deaths. Another executive time series. Every one of the 279 is a tragedy as is every one of the 246. The experience base has varied from year to year and there is no surprise that it has varied again. To assess the tone of the news report I have replotted the data myself.

Readers should note the following about the chart.

Some of the numbers for earlier years have been updated by the statistical authority.
I have recalculated natural process limits as there are still no more than 20 annual observations.
There is now a signal (in red) of an observation above the upper natural process limit.

The news report is justified, unlike the earlier ones. There is a signal in the chart and an objective basis for concluding that there is more than just a stable system of trouble. There is a signal and not just noise.

As my colleague Terry Weight always taught me, a signal gives us license to interpret the ups and downs on the chart. There are two possible narratives that immediately suggest themselves from the chart.

A sudden increase in deaths in 2013/14; or
A gradual increasing trend from around 200 in 2001/02.

The chart supports either story. To distinguish would require other sources of information, possibly historical data that can provide some borrowing strength, or a plan for future data collection. Once there is a signal, it makes sense to ask what was its cause. Building a narrative around the data is a critical part of that enquiry. A manager needs to seek the cause of the signal so that he or she can take action to improve system outcomes. Reliably identifying a cause requires trenchant criticism of historical data.

My first thought here was to wonder whether the railway data simply reflected an increasing trend in suicide in general. Certainly a very quick look at the data here suggests that the broader trend of suicides has been downwards and certainly not increasing. It appears that there is some factor localised to railways at work.

I have seen proposals to repeat a strategy from Japan of bathing railway platforms with blue light. I have not scrutinised the Japanese data but the claims made in this paper and this are impressive in terms of purported incident reduction. If these modifications are implemented at British stations we can look at the chart to see whether there is a signal of fewer suicides. That is the only real evidence that counts.

Those who were advocating a narrative of increasing railway suicides in earlier years may feel vindicated. However, until this latest evidence there was no signal on the chart. There is always competition for resources and directing effort on a false assumptions leads to misallocation. Intervening in a stable system of trouble, a system featuring only noise, on the false belief that there is a signal will usually make the situation worse. Failing to listen to the voice of the process on the chart risks diverting vital resources and using them to make outcomes worse.

Of course, data in terms of time between incidents is much more powerful in spotting an early signal. I have not had the opportunity to look at such data but it would have provided more, better and earlier evidence.

Where there is a perception of a trend there will always be an instinctive temptation to fit a straight line through the data. I always ask myself why this should help in identifying the causes of the signal. In terms of analysis at this stage I cannot see how it would help. However, when we come to look for a signal of improvement in future years it may well be a helpful step.

Deconstructing Deming X – Eliminate slogans!

Posted on March 11, 2015 by anthonycutler

10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce.

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

Inscription on the James Farley Post Office, New York City, New York, USA
William Mitchell Kendall pace Herodotus

Now, that’s what I call a slogan. Is this what Point 10 of Deming’s 14 Points was condemning? There are three heads here, all making quite distinct criticisms of modern management. The important dimension of this criticism is the way in which managers use data in communicating with the wider organisation, in setting imperatives and priorities and in determining what individual workers will consider important when they are free from immediate supervision.

Eliminate slogans!

The US postal inscription at the head of this blog certainly falls within the category of slogans. Apparently the root of the word “slogan” is the Scottish Gaelic sluagh-ghairm meaning a battle cry. It seeks to articulate a solidarity and commitment to purpose that transcends individual doubts or rationalisation. That is what the US postal inscription seeks to do. Beyond the data on customer satisfaction, the demands of the business to protect and promote its reputation, the service levels in place for individual value streams, the tension between current performance and aspiration, the disappointment of missed objectives, it seeks to draw together the whole of the organisation around an ideal.

Slogans are part of the broader oral culture of an organisation. In the words of Lawrence Freedman (Strategy: A History, Oxford, 2013, p564) stories, and I think by extension slogans:

[make] it possible to avoid abstractions, reduce complexity, and make vital points indirectly, stressing the importance of being alert to serendipitous opportunities, discontented staff, or the one small point that might ruin an otherwise brilliant campaign.

But Freedman was quick to point out the use of stories by consultants and in organisations frequently confused anecdote with data. They were commonly used selectively and often contrived. Freedman sought to extract some residual value from the culture of business stories, in particular drawing on the work of psychologist Jerome Bruner along with Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2 thinking. The purpose of the narrative of an organisation, including its slogans and shared stories, is not to predict events but to define a context for action when reality is inevitably overtaken by a special cause.

In building such a rich narrative, slogans alone are an inert and lifeless tactic unless woven with the continual, rigorous criticism of historical data. In fact, it is the process behaviour chart that acts as the armature around which the narrative can be wound. Building the narrative will be critical to how individuals respond to the messages of the chart.

Deming himself coined plenty of slogans: “Drive out fear”, “Create joy in work”, … . They are not forbidden. But to be effective they must form a verisimilar commentary on, and motivation for, the hard numbers and ineluctable signals of the process behaviour chart.

Eliminate exhortations!

I had thought I would dismiss this in a single clause. It is, though, a little more complicated. The sports team captain who urges her teammates onwards to take the last gasp scoring opportunity doesn’t necessarily urge in vain. There is no analysis of this scenario. It is only muscle, nerve, sweat and emotion.

The English team just suffered a humiliating exit from the Cricket World Cup. The head coach’s response was “We’ll have to look at the data.” Andrew Miller in The Times (London) (10 March 2015) reflected most cricket fans’ view when he observed that “a team of meticulously prepared cricketers suffered a collective loss of nerve and confidence.” Exhortations might not have gone amiss.

It is not, though, a management strategy. If your principal means of managing risk, achieving compelling objectives, creating value and consistently delivering customer excellence, day in, day out is to yell “one more heave!” then you had better not lose your voice. In the long run, I am on the side of the analysts.

Slogans and exhortations will prove a brittle veneer on a stable system of trouble (RearView). It is there that they will inevitably corrode engagement, breed cynicism, foster distrust, and mask decline. Only the process behaviour chart can guard against the risk.

Eliminate targets for the workforce!

This one is more complicated. How do I communicate to the rest of the organisation what I need from them? What are the consequences when they don’t deliver? How do the rest of the organisation communicate with me? This really breaks down into two separate topics and they happen to be the two halves of Deming’s Point 11.

I shall return to those in my next two posts in the Deconstructing Deming series.

Science journal bans p-values

Posted on March 4, 2015 by anthonycutler

Interesting news here that psychology journal Basic and Applied Social Psychology (BASP) has banned the use of p-values in the academic research papers that it will publish in the future.

The dangers of p-values are widely known though their use seems to persist in any number of disciplines, from the Higgs boson to climate change.

There has been some wonderful recent advocacy deprecating p-values, from Deirdre McCloskey and Regina Nuzzo among others. BASP editor David Trafimow has indicated that the journal will not now publish formal hypothesis tests (of the Neyman-Pearson type) or confidence intervals purporting to support experimental results. I presume that appeals to “statistical significance” are proscribed too. Trafimow has no dogma as to what people should do instead but is keen to encourage descriptive statistics. That is good news.

However, Trafimow does say something that worries me.

… as the sample size increases, descriptive statistics become increasingly stable and sampling error is less of a problem.

It is trite statistics that merely increasing sample size, as in the raw number of observations, is no guarantee of improving sampling error. If the sample is not rich enough to capture all the relevant sources of variation then data is amassed in vain. A common example is that of inter-laboratory studies of analytical techniques. A researcher who takes 10 observations from Laboratory A and 10 from Laboratory B really only has two observations. At least as far as the really important and dominant sources of variation are concerned. Increasing the number of observations to 100 from each laboratory would simply be a waste of resources.

But that is not all there is to it. Sampling error only addresses how well we have represented the sampling frame. In any reasonably interesting statistics, and certainly in any attempt to manage risk, we are only interested in the future. The critical question before we can engage in any, even tentative, statistical inference is “Is the data representative of the future?”. That requires that the data has the statistical property of exchangeability. Some people prefer the more management-oriented term “stable and predictable”. That’s why I wished Trafimow hadn’t used the word “stable”.

Assessment of stability and predictability is fundamental to any prediction or data based management. It demands confident use of process-behaviour charts and trenchant scrutiny of the sources of variation that drive the data. It is the necessary starting point of all reliable inference. A taste for p-values is a major impediment to clear thinking on the matter. They do not help. It would be encouraging to believe that scepticism was on the march but I don’t think prohibition is the best means of education.

Is data the plural of anecdote?

Posted on August 18, 2014 by anthonycutler

I seem to hear this intriguing quote everywhere these days.

The plural of anecdote is not data.

There is certainly one website that traces it back to Raymond Wolfinger, a political scientist from Berkeley, who claims to have said sometime around 1969 to 1970:

The plural of anecdote is data.

So, which is it?

Anecdote

My Concise Oxford English Dictionary (“COED”) defines “anecdote” as:

Narrative … of amusing or interesting incident.

Wiktionary gives a further alternative definition.

An account which supports an argument, but which is not supported by scientific or statistical analysis.

It’s clear that anecdote itself is a concept without a very exact meaning. It’s a story, not usually reported through an objective channel such as a journalism, or scientific or historical research, that carries some implication of its own unreliability. Perhaps it is inherently implausible when read against objective background evidence. Perhaps it is hearsay or multiple hearsay.

The anecdote’s suspect reliability is offset by the evidential weight it promises, either as a counter example to a cherished theory or as compelling support for a controversial hypothesis. Lyall Watson’s hundredth monkey story is an anecdote. So, in eighteenth century England, was the folk wisdom, recounted to Edward Jenner (pictured), that milkmaids were generally immune to smallpox.

Data

My COED defines “data” as:

Facts or impormation, esp[ecially] as basis for inference.

Wiktionary gives a further alternative definition.

Pieces of information.

Again, not much help. But the principal definition in the COED is:

Thing[s] known or granted, assumption or premise from which inferences may be drawn.

The suggestion in the word “data” is that what is given is the reliable starting point from which we can start making deductions or even inductive inferences. Data carries the suggestion of reliability, soundness and objectivity captured in the familiar Arthur Koestler quote.

Without the little hard bits of marble which are called “facts” or “data” one cannot compose a mosaic …

Yet it is common knowledge that “data” cannot always be trusted. Trust in data is a recurring theme in this blog. Cyril Burt’s purported data on the heritability of IQ is a famous case. There are legions of others.

Smart investigators know that the provenance, reliability and quality of data cannot be taken for granted but must be subject to appropriate scrutiny. The modern science of Measurement Systems Analysis (“MSA”) has developed to satisfy this need. The defining characteristic of anecdote is that it has been subject to no such scrutiny.

Evidence

Anecdote and data, as broadly defined above, are both forms of evidence. All evidence is surrounded by a penumbra of doubt and unreliability. Even the most exacting engineering measurement is accompanied by a recognition of its uncertainty and the limitations that places on its use and the inferences that can be drawn from it. In fact, it is exactly because such a measurement comes accompanied by a numerical characterisation of its precision and accuracy, that its reliability and usefulness are validated.

It seems inherent in the definition of anecdote that it should not be taken at face value. Happenstance or wishful fabrication, it may not be a reliable basis for inference or, still less, action. However, it was Jenner’s attention to the smallpox story that led him to develop vaccination against smallpox. No mean outcome. Against that, the hundredth monkey storey is mere fantastical fiction.

Anecdotes about dogs sniffing out cancer stand at the beginning of the journey of confirmation and exploitation.

Two types of analysis

Part of the answer to the dilemma comes from statistician John Tukey’s observation that there are two kinds of data analysis: Exploratory Data Analysis (“EDA”) and Confirmatory Data Analysis (“CDA”).

EDA concerns the exploration of all the available data in order to suggest some interesting theories. As economist Ronald Coase put it:

If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.

Once a concrete theory or hypothesis is to mind, a rigorous process of data generation allows formal statistical techniques to be brought to bear (“CDA”) in separating the signal in the data from the noise and in testing the theory. People who muddle up EDA and CDA tend to get into difficulties. It is a foundation of statistical practice to understand the distinction and its implications.

Anecdote may be well suited to EDA. That’s how Jenner successfully proceeded though his CDA of testing his vaccine on live human subjects wouldn’t get past many ethics committees today.

However, absent that confirmatory CDA phase, the beguiling anecdote may be no more than the wrecker’s false light.

A basis for action

Tukey’s analysis is useful for the academic or the researcher in an R&D department where the environment is not dynamic and time not of the essence. Real life is more problematic. There is not always the opportunity to carry out CDA. The past does not typically repeat itself so that we can investigate outcomes with alternative factor settings. As economist Paul Samuelson observed:

We have but one sample of history.

History is the only thing that we have any data from. There is no data on the future. Tukey himself recognised the problem and coined the phrase uncomfortable science for inferences from observations whose repetition was not feasible or practical.

In his recent book Strategy: A History (Oxford University Press, 2013), Lawrence Freedman points out the risks of managing by anecdote “The Trouble with Stories” (pp615-618). As Nobel laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman has investigated at length, our interpretation of anecdote is beset by all manner of cognitive biases such as the availability heuristic and base rate fallacy. The traps for the statistically naïve are perilous.

But it would be a fool who would ignore all evidence that could not be subjected to formal validation. With a background knowledge of statistical theory and psychological biases, it is possible to manage trenchantly. Bayes’ theorem suggests that all evidence has its value.

I think that the rather prosaic answer to the question posed at the head of this blog is that data is the plural of anecdote, as it is the singular, but anecdotes are not the best form of data. They may be all you have in the real world. It would be wise to have the sophistication to exploit them.

Bad Statistics I – the phantom line

Posted on August 10, 2014 by anthonycutler

I came across this chart on the web recently.

This really is one of my pet hates: a perfectly informative scatter chart with a meaningless straight line drawn on it.

The scatter chart is interesting. Each individual blot represents a nation state. Its vertical position represents national average life expectancy. I take that to be mean life expectancy at birth, though it is not explained in terms. The horizontal axis represents annual per capita health spending, though there is no indication as to whether that is adjusted for purchasing power. The whole thing is a snapshot from 2011. The message I take from the chart is that Hungary and Mexico, and I think two smaller blots, represent special causes, they are outside the experience base represented by the balance of the nations. As to the other nations the chart suggests that average life expectancy doesn’t depend very strongly on health spending.

Of course, there is much more to a thorough investigation of the impact of health spending on outcomes. The chart doesn’t reveal differential performance as to morbidity, or lost hours, or a host of important economic indicators. But it does put forward that one, slightly surprising, message that longevity is not enhanced by health spending. Or at least it wasn’t in 2011 and there is no explanation as to why that year was isolated.

The question is then as to why the author decided to put the straight line through it. As the chart “helpfully” tells me it is a “Linear Trend line”. I guess (sic) that this is a linear regression through the blots, possibly with some weighting as to national population. I originally thought that the size of the blot was related to population but there doesn’t seem to be enough variation in the blot sizes. It looks like there are only two sizes of blot and the USA (population 318.5 million) is the same size as Norway (5.1 million).

The difficulty here is that I can see that the two special cause nations, Hungary and Mexico, have very high leverage. That means that they have a large impact on where the straight lines goes, because they are so unusual as observations. The impact of those two atypical countries drags the straight line down to the left and exaggerates the impact that spending appears to have on longevity. It really is an unhelpful straight line.

These lines seem to appear a lot. I think that is because of the ease with which they can be generated in Excel. They are an example of what statistician Edward Tufte called chartjunk. They simply clutter the message of the data.

Of course, the chart here is a snapshot, not a video. If you do want to know how to use scatter charts to explain life expectancy then you need to learn here from the master, Hans Rosling.

There are no lines in nature, only areas of colour, one against another.

Edouard Manet

Unanticipated Knowledge

… Anthony Cutler's blog on operational excellence and risk management

Category Archives: Signal and noise