Statistics

  • One year in – Census and the Future

    3rd September 2023 by

    Keen readers of this blog will know, I took up the post as Interim Chief Statistician in April 2022. A year on, I was pleased to accept the post permanently. In this blog I will share my experiences from the past year and few months. Reading Time: 5 minutes Passion about Statistics to Improve Decision…

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  • Working as a government statistician – Maike Waldmann

    8th March 2023 by

    This article has been produced as part of a blog series to spotlight the work of analysts and statisticians across government. In this blog, hear from Maike Waldmann about her work as part of the Poverty and Deprivation Statistics Team. The poverty and deprivation statistics team within the Scottish Government is a team of two,…

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  • Working as a government statistician – Esther Roughsedge

    8th March 2023 by

    This article has been produced as part of a blog series to spotlight the work of analysts and statisticians across government. In this first blog, hear from Esther Roughsedge about her work in National Records of Scotland on the BBC Scotland Documentary ‘Who lives in Scotland?’ I head the Population and Migration Statistics team at…

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  • January spotlight on statistical work in Scotland

    1st February 2023 by

    Reading Time: 5 minutes In my first blog as Chief Statistician, I spoke about the vital role statistics play in enriching the evidence base. I am passionate about the role statisticians can make to develop better policies for the people of Scotland. In Autumn 2022, I followed up by setting out our mission across the…

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  • Future of COVID-19 Data Reporting

    5th April 2022 by

    Following the publication of Scotland’s Strategic Framework update in February 2022 we are now planning to move to a single main source of headline COVID-19 data. All headline COVID-19 data can now be sourced from Public Health Scotland’s (PHS) COVID-19 Daily Dashboard.   The Scottish Government (SG) will no longer provide updates to the Coronavirus (COVID-19): daily data for…

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  • Collecting and publishing equality data

    11th March 2022 by

    I’m Dan Craig, an assistant statistician in the Equality Analysis Team within the Scottish Government. In this blog, I talk about a key project within our Equality Data Improvement Programme (EDIP) – updating our guidance for the collection of equality data. The EDIP a multi-phase programme of work that aims to strengthen Scotland’s equality evidence…

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  • Improving the Speed and Accuracy of Agricultural Statistics

    16th February 2022 by

    This month, the team are looking at improving the speed and accuracy of our agricultural statistics. They focussed on the computer code and the time taken from receiving data to producing statistics. And, we are learning from gaming and software development. In simple terms, it is a way of coding that removes errors. It also…

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  • Scottish Government Assistant Statistician Recruitment

    25th January 2022 by

    Scottish Government recently launched a recruitment campaign for assistant statisticians at B1, B2 and B3 grades.  We are recruiting for a variety of roles across the stats group across all grades.  We have statisticians working in all parts of Government, from economy to education, from the Census to climate change, from housing to health.  The…

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  • Changes to COVID-19 case reporting

    13th January 2022 by

    From today, 13 January 2022, in addition to reporting the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 through a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test, we will also begin reporting a combined figure for the number of people who have recorded a first positive PCR or an LFD (lateral flow device) test. This change in reporting…

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  • Sex and Gender in Data

    22nd September 2021 by

    By Roger Halliday, Chief Statistician, Scottish Government.   Today I am publishing the guidance on sex and gender in data. This is for those who collect data, covering how they should think about what data they need, and some standard approaches to collecting and publishing this data. This is an important contribution to my aim…

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