Wed, 07 Dec 2011
The Art of asking a question.
For such a simple concept, you would be surprised how many people struggle to ask the right question. The inspiration for this blog post comes from surveys. There are several organisations out there that will bribe you with a small amount of money in return for answering surveys on a selection of topics. The amounts are small, usually in the range of £0.05 - £1.00. But the answers have far more value.
The organisations that are asking the questions are not the ones that are using the results, they are asking on behalf of someone else, be it a company, a paper, a tv show, a think tank, or a charity. The results go on to be used to influence marketing, political and research policy. But the more surveys I fill in, the more I find myself questioning the value of any of the results that they get. All of it coming from the poor wording of many of the questions.
In a recent survey I did I was presented with a question as follows:
"During the winter months (November-Febuary) How often do you have the following issues?"
With a list of items such as a frozen up car windscreen, a car that will not start, or a broken windscreen wiper blade. In all honesty I answered zero to each of these questions. Which is a technically accurate answer. But it skews the results for one shockingly simple reason. I don't have a car. Which ever organisation commissioned this is getting results that by and large are nonsensical due to the poor wording of their questions. As one friend summed up:
It turns out that most students, children, telecommuters etc do NOT have frozen windscreen issues! Who knew.
Obviously, this is a minor issue in this case, some company has got some useless research and it probably won't have any major impact on us all. But these organisations are doing research for people who do matter, such as Her Majesty's Government. I recall a few years back doing a survey where I was asked for my opinion on the privatisation of Search and Rescue services in the UK. Lo and behold a few months later the government announced plans to privatise Search and Rescue services in the UK.
All this, based on some poorly worded questions asked to a largely anonymous crowd of people. So, to all those involved in research using surveys, please, stop and look at your questions. Have you assumed something in there? Have you checked the person you are asking has a TV before asking about their viewing habits? Or checked they have a car before asking if they have issues with their windscreen? Remember a question is not always as simple as you think.
Do you know what the time is?
—Yes.
posted at: 16:57 | path: / | permanent link to this entry | 0 comments
Thu, 23 Jun 2011
Council to spend 17k on Lord Mayor robes
Like all Canterbury residents with an interest in politics, this evening I attended the "General Purposes Committee" meeting of Canterbury City Council in the guildhall (okay, there were two members of the public there...). I had originally decided to go because I had been told that the subject of allotment price rises was going to be discussed; alas, this was not the case. However, as the agenda progressed, something came up which left me rather shocked — Canterbury City Council are planning to spend £16,995 (+VAT) of taxpayers' money on replacing the Lord Mayors Robe.
Apparently, the current robe — which has served the City of Canterbury for 20 years — is starting to show signs of wear, and has a hole forming on the left side of the chest. Costings were provided from the supplier Ede and Ravenscroft for a number of options, ranging from £3,575 (+VAT) to simply repair what we have, to £11,795 (+VAT) for a replacement which would utilise what can be salvaged of the existing robe, up to the headline-grabbing £16,995 (+VAT) for a full-on replacement. So, at a time when budgets everywhere are squeezed, where council employees are losing their jobs, and the price of allotments is planned to go up by 100% (the real reason I was at the meeting), they want to spend over £17k on a fancy dress costume!
In all fairness, I should make it clear that — at this point — they have not explicitly commited to buy the garment in question. There was a vote amoungst the councillors present, which resulted in a decision to fully replace the current robe — but deferring it to give the opportunity for "officers to explore alternative suppliers and options for sponsorship". Before the purchase can be completed it will need approval from a full council meeting — but the ball has been put in motion to spend £17k of public money on a robe only worn by the Lord Mayor about 30 times a year (the number quoted during the meeting).
Makes you wonder how many other, perhaps more useful ways we could find to spend that £17k, given the current climate.
posted at: 21:57 | path: / | permanent link to this entry | 2 comments
Sun, 01 May 2011
The Future is Here
This Saturday (2011-04-30) I was fortunate enough to attend the first Bar Camp Canterbury. Various talks were on offer ranging in subjects from Load testing websites, to building clocks with Arduinos, to Growing your own Vegetables. But, amongst all of these talks there was one which I found particully interesting. It was given by Proactive Paul, and the title was simply "The year 5001". The session was a discussion group on what we all thought the world would be like in the year 5001.
As you might expect from a group of geeks that probably read to much scifi, alot of the answers were almost text book, or atleast blatently lifted from Peter F Hamilton's Nights Dawn Trilogy but in all this, there was an exchange between two people, and it started like this:
Where's my flying car?
The response was as flippant as it was cliche:
"The future is already here. It just isn't evenly distributed." — William Gibson
But a seed was set. Over many beers in the pub after the event, the thought festered. Laying in bed trying to stop the room spin, the thought festered. It hit me. Gibson is right. The future is here, we're just looking in the wrong place. Take for example the idea of the flying car. The stylised view of this imparted upon us from many a scifi work makes us imagine a small personalised flying vehicle we can take from our home to business. We have that. For the rich, there is the private helicopter. No longer is the Helicopter the sole preserve of Governments and Military. Infact no longer is it the sole preserve of the über rich, with small helicopters being available for the price of a high end BMW. But what of the rest of us? Well as with how the car was for the rich in the beginning, there was for everyone else the Omnibus. Well, the same applies to flying car. Jenson Button can fly from his home in the Channel Islands to the Mclaren Technical Centre, but you and I? We take Ryanair. That is our flying car. It is here.
What about other scifi concepts? What about teleportation? Well, that's here too. Ok we aren't quite disassembling an individual atom by atom, and transmitting them to a destination and reassembling them. But, we are transmitting the essence of people round the world every day. It's called Skype. My Father can sit at his computer in the UK, and transmit his "essence" to my sister in Australia, and at the same time she can send the essence of her and my Nephew back in the oppsite direction. And it is the use of the word "Essence" there that is important. We don't need to transmit the whole human, we just need to transmit their avatar (thank you Snow Crash). But, and most importantly, that is conceptually our teleportation. I have my doubts that full on teleportation as envisage by Star Trek will happen, I suspect that the simple "very funny scotty, now beam down my clothes" element will put pay to any chances of it happening, but we don't need it, we can achieve the same effects now, with our technology. The future is here. We just don't realise it
posted at: 15:14 | path: / | permanent link to this entry | 0 comments
Sat, 30 Apr 2011
In memory of the Unknown Soldier
In 1920, the body of an unknown British soldier was buried with a full state funeral in Westminster Abbey. In 1923 when the Queen Mother married King George VI, she placed her Bouquet of flowers on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier[1]. Since then every royal bride since has done the same. Until now. Today when HRH The Duchess of Cambridge, Catherine Middleton left the Abbey, she didn't.
In general I am infavour of the Royal Family, I see no benefits to be had from getting rid of them, and by and large, I am ambivilant towards the royal wedding. However, I am rather upset that she didn't honour the Unknown Soldier. Have we grown complacent now? almost one century on from WWI? Do we now forget those who laid their lives down in various conflicts so that we might have our way of life. Wikipedia beleives that the bouquett will be placed on the tomb tomorrow[2], But if previous brides have done so on the way back from the Alter (or on the way to, in the case of QEQM.) Why did Catherine not? Am I the only person who is actually upset by this? Time will tell if the bouquett actually arrives on the tomb tomorrow (Saturday 30th April).
Edit (2011-05-01): It seems that the bouquet was laid on the tomb, eventually.
"In keeping with royal tradition, the duchess's bridal bouquet was returned to Westminster Abbey where it was placed it on the grave of the unknown warrior in honour of Britain's war dead. It was a tradition started by the late Queen Mother in 1923." - BBC News
posted at: 02:06 | path: / | permanent link to this entry | 2 comments
Thu, 28 Apr 2011
Making Politics Matter - The Canterbury AV meeting
I have just returned from an interesting meeting about the AV referendum. The meeting was hosted by Canterbury Christchurch University and featured two speakers: John Ault (North West Director "Yes to fairer votes") and Daniel Hamilton (Director of Big Brother watch).
The format of the meeting gave each speaker 15 minutes to present their argument, followed by a questions & answers session.
I will provide some analysis of some of the more interesting questions and answers that I heard. This is by no means a complete account of the meeting, as I didn't get a chance to write everything down.
The first question was put forward by myself:
Do you honestly think that we will get another chance at voting reform in our lifetime if the no compaign win?
The response from Yes was a simple "I do not believe we will have another chance". The response from No was not really an answer to the question, but rather a most eloquent evasion of the issue, in true politician style. Unfortunately I was not given an opportunity to challenge this.
The next subject that came up was cost, where No argued AV would require expensive voting machines, and Yes pointed out that this was not the case. At some point someone asked the simple and beautiful question
How much should an election cost?
Both sides agreed on an answer along the lines of "as little as possible but let's not be cheap".
The No camp then brought up the issue that AV would encourage fringe parties and coalition governments. This was presented as if these were bad things. I disagree.
It is worth pointing out that the UK appears to have great trouble understanding the concept of coalition government. This is perhaps no surprise given that our FPTP voting system encourages strong single party governments, and thus we have little experience with coalition governments.
When done right, a coalition government provides stability of government by moderating all sides. Where a strong single party government can bulldozer over the opposition with whatever extreme policy they feel like, a coalition government would be forced to find a common ground for any policy they wish to implement, thus avoiding any extreme swings in government policy. The current coalition government is by no means a perfect example, given that neither party had any practical experience with conducting coalition negotiations, but still, there are some examples of the kind of moderation that results, for example with the £9000 limit on tuition fees, where the original proposal suggested no limits at all.
The argument that AV, and by inference any form of proportional representation, will give more of a voice to supporters of fringe parties such as the BNP was put forth by No. This was presented as if this were a bad thing. I disagree. When there are enough people voting for these parties, who are we to disenfranchise them of a voice in parliament, just because we disagree with them? What would be the problem if, say, BNP got a couple of seats? Let them voice their propaganda in the commons. Let there be a debate on it, and see who wins the argument. Voltaire understood.
The final argument put forth by No was that there are only 3 countries that use AV. This is, however, asking the wrong question. AV is just one of many forms of proportional representation voting systems. The real question is, how many countries use a non-proportional voting system such as FPTP? When asked after the meeting, No answered "The UK and Malta", so that's just 2 countries in Europe.
All in all, this meeting didn't present anything new. The same arguments were being recycled by both sides. It is unfortunate that the meeting was not a real debate, where both sides could challenge the other's arguments to weed out the half-truths and even blatant lies, but hopefully this article serves to put some things in a clear perspective.
Edit: @DBirkin has written an article with his views of the meeting from the No side of things.
posted at: 00:16 | path: / | permanent link to this entry | 0 comments
Wed, 20 Apr 2011
Valid Alternative Votes
Something that came out of my article on Alternative Vote Ice Cream was that there seemed to be confusion about what are valid votes under Alternative Vote. So I thought I would put together a few examples of valid ballot papers, continuing my ice cream example.
Example 1 - All preferences
| Candidate | Vote |
|---|---|
| Strawberry | 2 |
| Vanilla | 3 |
| Chocolate | 1 |
| Fudge | 4 |
| Mint | 5 |
This is the classic AV ballot. All preferences are expressed, from 1 to 5.
Example 2 - two preferences
| Candidate | Vote |
|---|---|
| Strawberry | 2 |
| Vanilla | |
| Chocolate | 1 |
| Fudge | |
| Mint |
This ballot only has 2 preferences, if Chocolate and Strawberry are both eliminated, this ballot is simply "No Further Preference".
Example 3 - single preferences
| Candidate | Vote |
|---|---|
| Strawberry | |
| Vanilla | X |
| Chocolate | |
| Fudge | |
| Mint |
X marks the spot, Just like we are used to with our old ballot papers.
| Candidate | Vote |
|---|---|
| Strawberry | |
| Vanilla | |
| Chocolate | ☺ |
| Fudge | |
| Mint |
Even a smiley face is a valid first preference. Although a sad face would not be valid
| Candidate | Vote |
|---|---|
| Strawberry | |
| Vanilla | |
| Chocolate | ✓ |
| Fudge | |
| Mint |
A tick, works just as well, showing a clear first preference.
The ballots in this example have the disadvantage of only showing a first preference. If that first preference is elimated at any point in the count, then it becomes "No Further Preference". It is in your best interest to make the most of your ballot and fill in as many preferences as you are happy to have.
Summary
These are just a few examples of ballots, there are other permutations that may be valid, but will likely come down to the decision of the returning officer. There are also a multitude of invalid options available, like numbering everything with a 1, but they are too numerous to list, so for this article I am trying to show you just some of the valid options
Disclaimer: The above is just my opinion, exact implementation in any given election may well be different, consult relevant laws before casting your vote, just encase your smiley face isn't considered valid
posted at: 17:59 | path: / | permanent link to this entry | 0 comments
Alternative Vote Ice Cream
This all started when a friend asked me "how do you count AV ballots?". I tried to give a demonstration by picking some random numbers for number of votes cast, but, ultimately, it wasn't a very good explanation. So the idea formed, why don't I get some real data, and then I can talk through counting, with all the transfers and other detailed bits of AV.
So I put together a small google form asking for people to give a preference on their favourite flavour of icecream. People filling it in could fill in from 1 to 5 preferences, for their flavour of icecream from the 5 choices given: Chocolate, Mint, Vanilla, Strawberry, Fudge. The flavours I chose were picked at random and were just to give us some names to work with, I could easily have chosen A, B, C, D, E, the data would still serve its purpose.
What I hadn't expected when I released the survey unto the net that I would not only get some lovely data to work from, but also, some nice realistic spoilt ballots (due to a bug in google forms). Cheeseburger, Potato, Coffee and "CabooseRules" were all imaginative responses, but were alas, spoilt ballots, just like in the real thing. I left the survey running having tweeted about it and distributed the link to various IRC channels, and in the end I had 71 responses.
With these 71 responses in hand I set about counting them by hand, to which I got the response "You're counting manually?". Well, as a student I took part in the count of many Student Union Elections using a very similiar system (Single member STV), and so I am very comfy counting by hand. My friends however are mostly geeks and like a challenge, so between them they decided to see if they could write some software to count the votes, resulting in 3 implementations in Python, and one in Haskell.
So what are the results?
| Round 1 | Round 2 Transfer | Round 2 Total | Round 3 Transfer | Round 3 Total | Round 4 Transfer | Round 4 Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vanilla | 15 | +3 | 18 | +4 | 22 | +11 | 33 |
| Mint | 22 | +1 | 23 | +3 | 26 | +6 | 32 |
| Chocolate | 13 | +2 | 15 | +3 | 18 | - | - |
| Fudge | 9 | +1 | 10 | - | - | - | - |
| Strawberry | 7 | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| No further Preference | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 66 | - | 66 | - | 66 | - | 66 |
| Quota | 33 | - | 33 | - | 33 | - | 33 |
If we were running the election as first past the post, Mint wins, with 22 votes. But, 44 voters did not want Mint. It is worth noting however that if this was run a FPTP the result may be slightly different as people may vote tactically. Now, as you follow across the rounds of counting and the transfers you can see as first Strawberry, then Fudge, then Chocolate are eliminated, until only Mint and Vanilla are left. With 32 votes to Mint, and Vanilla on 33. Vanilla thus wins.
Now the no2av crowd will no doubt leap on this as "how did Vanilla win? it came second" The point here is we have not elected the most popular, but the least unpopular. How many people if given an icecream would grumble if given Mint? but would be quite happy to receive Vanilla? And that is the big advantage of AV. Gone are the days where a very small minority of the electorate can dictate to the rest. You need the support of 50% of those voting to win. Something Vanilla acheives in this example.
What is also crucially demonstrated in all of this however, is that people are not getting more than one vote. If you look at the total in each round, it stays constant across the count. Each ballot is counted at most once per round, not being counted if no further preference is made. Pretty simple really?
The google spreadsheet with all the results in it can be found here or if you prefer as a CSV file here, so you can have a go at counting yourself, work it out, follow the process through, and understand it. In the spreadsheet I have coloured eliminated votes, and marked the vote that counts in bold. There is also a second sheet (marked "Working") which shows the totals I got from my hand count, plus the same as percentages.
For the more geeky amoungst us there is a Haskell, Python & Python & another Python implementation of the count by Tom Davie, Andee Cassidy, Shish, and Steve Engledow respectively.
So hopefully this little exercise will demonstrate a bit better how AV internals work. But, do remember, you don't need to understand the above to vote AV, as a voter all you need to do is rank as many of the candidates as you like in order of preference, as simple as 1, 2, 3.
posted at: 16:44 | path: / | permanent link to this entry | 0 comments
Thu, 14 Apr 2011
Canterbury Museums, extortion in progress
As the great funding cuts from on high trickle down, the various divisions of local government start looking for areas where they can tighten their spending, or raise new revenue. Canterbury City Council is far from unique in the UK by trying to find ways to cut costs & increase revenue. But it seems, that someone at the Council really hasn't quite thought about what they are doing with their budget figures, perhaps staring more at excel than looking out the window at the real world.
Now before I got into too much detail, I will apologise for the unashamed localisation of this topic, if you are not living in Canterbury, or planning on Visiting Canterbury, you may want to scroll down and have a read of past articles, or maybe go outside and have a nice walk. But for those of you who stick around, a quick recap. Canterbury thrives on tourism, in 2009 alone, 6,372,000 people made a day trip to Canterbury, contributing £225,991,000 of the local economy and accounting for 8,189 jobs. (Numbers courtesy of Canterbury City Council: "The Economic Impact of Tourism on the City of Canterbury 2009"). Pretty impressive when you consider that Canterbury has a population of just 43432[1].
So, what are all these tourists doing in Canterbury? Well the obvious answer is visiting the Cathedral. Canterbury Cathedral being one of the most famous in Britain, and by far the most popular attraction in the city. But, having spent your £9 entry to the Cathedral [2] and enjoyed a morning wandering round admiring the magnificent venue, what else is their to do in Canterbury? Well you could spend £7 on a trip along the river[3]. Or perhaps a trip to the City Museums is up your street...
And this is where we get to the point of this article. Until very recently, you could trundle out of the Cathedral, and make the short walk just across the street into the cool surrounds of the Canterbury Roman Museum, part with £3.10, and spend a lovely hour or so admiring some very nice exhibits on the roman history upon which Canterbury is built, all for the same price as a Large Cappuccino with cream at Starbucks (£2.75 + 35p for the cream). But that was then. Now, due to the wonderful creative types at Canterbury City council, they want to up that price to £6. No, that is not a typo, SIX pounds, for the Roman museum, a 93.5% increase. But the story is even worse over at the Museum of Canterbury with Rupert Bear Museum where prices have just gone up 113% from £3.75 to £8.
Now in fairness to Canterbury City Council, as part of this increase in prices, the adult ticket now also includes 1 accompanying child, Something which the £3.10 above didn't. But for those who don't have children in tow, that is no consolation. So what is the thinking from Canterbury City Council on this one? Do they have some unpublished research that adults without children account for such a small percentage of visitors to Canterbury to be statistically insignificiant? Or, have they fallen into the trap whereby they see tourists as walking sacks of money waiting to be mugged?
Listening to various councillors at the recent Canterbury Area Members Panel, it was clear that the general thinking was that people happily spent £7.50 for a river tour, so surely they would be willing to spend £8 on a museum. But I am not entirely sure I agree with their thinking. Having visited both museums to see what they are like, I can honestly say that I would not be willing to spend that much to visit them. Especially if I had already spent £9 to visit the Cathedral. A quick straw poll amongst some friends (demographic all late 20's degree educated types), the general response was "it was a nice little museum … 8 quid just strikes me as a little bit too steep".
If a visitor to Canterbury went to the Cathedral, and both museums listed above, it would cost them £23. When you consider that most large London museums offer free entry, as does the soon to be opened Turner Contemporary in Margate, you have to ask yourself, what is going to make someone come to Canterbury for a day trip ? If they do come, what is going to make them stay longer than the Cathedral visit, thus keep them spending money in the local economy, and supporting jobs? I find myself asking, has Canterbury City Council opted for the easy way out, hoping higher prices will result in higher revenue? or should they perhaps reconsider their marketing options? Why not £8 for entry to both museums, with a 10% voucher for some local eateries or £15 including Cathedral entry? Why no 10% off if you came by train? Why is there no Roman Legionaire marching up and down the highstreet on a Saturday drumming up custom?
Canterbury is just 58 minutes from London by train, and would make a fantastic day out for many in the city, but, has naivity on the side of Canterbury City Council killed this off before it's even had a chance to show promise by simply pricing itself out of the market? Only time will tell, in the mean time, I look foward to visiting the Turner Contemporary, and enjoying Fish 'n' Chips on the sea front...
posted at: 19:24 | path: / | permanent link to this entry | 0 comments