Bizarre link

7 July 2011 Last updated at 10:17 GMT By Michael Blastland GO FIGURE - Seeing stats in a different way What's the link between tennis on TV and washing machines? If you suspect a weird connection, ask a statistician, says Michael Blastland in his regular column.

"Do you repair washing machines?"

"Indeed we do. Wimbledon is it?

"Sorry?"

"The tennis. Been watching?"

"Er, a little. Don't tell me… you're a tennis-lovers-only washing-machine repair shop."

"No. Just that we were quiet for Wimbledon, booked-up now."

"Really? Wimbledon affects demand for washing-machine repairs?"

"Not half."

"What is it, two weeks' desire for whiter-than-white whites that wears them out?"

"Could be. Or that people don't wash anything because they're glued to the telly."

"Or that…"

Let's stop there. I love weird links and explanations. They remind us of the difficulty of knowing for sure what causes what.

Muddying the waters...

Of course, it could be just the usual story of people spending less when they're preoccupied, much like "Olympics/World Cup-watching costs UK economy billions", as headlines like to say.

But the fact the washing machine shop seems to be having a post-Wimbledon bounce shows what's often wrong with "the cost of…" stories. They fail to take account of catching up later. Cause and effect can be more tangled than portrayed.

So maybe washing machines have nothing to do with tennis. It is a bit surprising that people apparently go without one for up to two weeks, watching with enough devotion to make the difference between no business at all and booked solid.

Well, it is to me anyway. So maybe it's not Wimbledon what done it, maybe it's Glastonbury mud. Maybe both. Maybe it's the weather.

Kebab vans

Someone somewhere in Britain's statistical machinery will be counting the business done by washing machine repair shops. They will, really. Business surveys even count turnover in kebab vans.

Continue reading the main story

Who knows if it's generally true that there's a repair slump during Wimbledon fortnight or if this is one shop where whoever should be on the phone dreams instead of Andy Murray”

End Quote And when there's talk of a return to recession, the explanation for a fall in business will matter. One such explanation earlier this year was snow. Some economists now begin to wonder if that was the whole truth.

Part of the problem here is our ability to tell stories to fit any fact. Let's say we hypothesise that it's not Wimbledon, it's the weather, all that rain. And then we remember that this year's Wimbledon was mostly sunny.

Oops. But never mind, because now can we say that hot weather makes people sweaty, just as rainy weather makes them soggy. Either way, more washing and more breakdowns.

There's danger as well as genius in the ease with which people construct graceful narrative arcs from any two things that grab their attention, like tennis on telly and the business bottom line.

So who knows the real explanation? Who knows if it's generally true that there's a repair slump during Wimbledon fortnight or if this is one shop where whoever should be on the phone dreams instead of Andy Murray.

Ok, it is only a washing machine. Apart from me running low on socks, should you care?

Blame it on the weatherman

Kind of - if you care about how we claim to know stuff. The point of all this is to argue that it helps to have a restless imagination.

The book Freakonomics became a hit partly with a controversial argument that falling crime was due not to law enforcement but because abortion became easier in the 1970s, meaning fewer potential criminals were born. Whatever you think of that, it's good to ask ourselves what we might previously have missed.

Which is why I prefer stats to politics. Doing good stats means exercising a pathological interest in the story that might have been missed. Doing politics can seem to mean a near pathological interest in telling us why your story was right all along.

So back to tennis and washing machines, what do you reckon? Was there a repair slump? Is Wimbledon the explanation? If not, what is? And how would you find out?

Answers welcome in the usual way. The best, by which I mean the most ludicrous as well as the most plausible, will go in the readers' comments below.

Mind you, do I have any robust evidence for this difference between politics and stats? None whatsoever.

It's all anecdote and prejudice and not even the opinion of the bloke in the washing machine shop. So how would we find the evidence? Random controlled lab tests on ministers and professors of statistics, maybe? More answers please.

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'Bizarre' seal plans under fire

16 June 2011 Last updated at 09:27 GMT By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News Harbour seals are declining around Scotland as a whole, for unknown reasons The Scottish government is coming under fire from environmental groups over plans to protect coastal sites used by only half of the nation's seals.

Numbers of harbour (or common) seals are declining, and campaigners say not protecting all the sites where they haul themselves onto land is "bizarre".

The government says it wants a balance that does not impact "other sustainable activities around the coast".

Its consultation on seal haul-out sites ends next week.

In the sites it designates, seals would be protected from "harrassment", under measures contained in the Marine Act passed last year.

The Scottish government is keen to leave space for industries such as fish farming to develop

But Vassili Papastavrou, a biologist with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw), said protecting sites used by only half of the seals was "bizarre".

"The government suggests that allowing intentional harassment of seals on about half of their haul-out sites is part of some kind of 'balance' between seals and other sustainable activities," he said.

"But how could an activity that forces a top predator from the local ecosystem ever meet criteria for 'sustainability'?"

These "sustainable" activities could include industries such as fish-farming.

Elaine Murray, Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Dumfriesshire, fought to have haul-out sites recognised in the Marine Act, and is concerned that only half of the seals would be covered.

"This is very odd - it seems to me to be contrary to the intention of the Act to protect only 50% of the common seal haul-out sites - especially when it's the population of common seals which is a cause for concern," she told BBC News.

"To my recollection, there was no discussion on limiting the number of haul-out sites covered by the harassment offence when this was being discussed during the passage of the Act."

Balance issue The harbour seal (Phoca vitulina) is found on the shores of the UK and other northern European countries, down the east and west coasts of North America, and on the east coast of Russia and Japan.

Globally, it is not threatened, with numbers estimated at five to six million.

But in northern Scotland, numbers have declined sharply - by about 60% during the last decade in Orkney and Shetland.

The other species that lives around Scottish shores, the grey seal (Halichoerus grypus), has expanded in recent decades.

The reasons behind these trends, and whether the fortunes of the two species are linked, are not well understood.

Data on Scotland's seal population is compiled by Callan Duck from the Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU) at St Andrews University.

He told BBC News that "it would probably be a good idea" to protect all the sites where harbour seals haul themselves onto land, given the population shrinkage.

Seals haul themselves onto land for a number of reasons, including reproduction

The government asked SMRU to draw up a list of priority sites for protection, and this document - seen by BBC News - makes clear that the decision to aim for 50% coverage was the government's.

"Enough sites were identified to contain at least 50% of each Seal Management Area's most recent count of harbour and grey seals," it reads.

"The Scottish Government decided that this would offer a good balance between maximising protection while minimising possible impacts on other sustainable activities around the coast."

The provisional list contains 146 haul-out sites, including 101 used by harbour seals.

The consultation document says it is "intended to provide a focus for discussion.

"It may be that some stakeholders will wish to suggest additional sites be added to the list for consideration or, alternatively, to suggest that some sites currently on the list should be removed."

The consultation closes on Tuesday 21 June, and Elaine Murray is urging people concerned by the plans to send their comments to the Scottish government by then.

A government spokeswoman said all responses would be welcomed.

"The draft list of seal haul-outs sites set out in the consultation paper sought to record those containing the highest concentrations of each species of seal," she said.

"This list was considered a useful starting point for the consultation, but the latter makes very clear that the list is not fixed and may be increased or reduced following consideration of consultation responses."

But Callan Duck is also keen to secure more protection for seals at European level.

"All cetaceans have been designated as protected species by the EU - seals don't have the same protection, even though they're considerably less numerous than some cetacean species," he said.

"So a more fundamental question is: why don't they have that same protection? Why are they second-class citizens?"

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