tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3881762807913180318.post263764430128465616..comments2024-01-23T16:53:02.428+00:00Comments on Mark Thompson: The electoral system and the expenses scandal correlation - Legg updateMark Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00744387583593537268noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3881762807913180318.post-25283015942185470692010-02-06T09:57:03.768+00:002010-02-06T09:57:03.768+00:00Mark: what hyena said. The reason is that the ave...Mark: what hyena said. The reason is that the average constituency is 74,000 electors, but they vary from Eileann na-Thingummybob at 22,000 to the Isle of Wight at 110,000. You can see that a majority of 1,000 looks far more ropey in the Scottish Isles than on the one of the south coast of England! I can sort out that problem quite quickly, I think: the ONS has a dataset with electors per constituency at the last election.<br /><br />Also, you ought to take into account the length of time an MP has been sitting in the House. MPs who arrived during the last Parliament have had less time to abuse the system, but (in principle; I don't expect this in practice) could have been every bit as bad. That would be the big job, and you'd have to cut it off with the duration of time Legg was considering: I don't believe he considered claims going back to the Eighties, did he?Phil Walkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07682724722979908589noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3881762807913180318.post-34164438519023969682010-02-05T15:24:21.692+00:002010-02-05T15:24:21.692+00:00san/hyena,
Not knowing a huge amount about stats ...san/hyena,<br /><br />Not knowing a huge amount about stats I was not sure how to go about doing things like regression etc.<br /><br />I split them into quartiles to try and maintain some consistency with the method used previously.<br /><br />As for the measure of the swing needed being more pertinent than the absolute size of the majority, I am certainly open to that idea but can you clarify why that is better? I don't have time right now to work out or collate all the swings to redo this, however the data is in the public domain now (see update to the post above) so anyone can take it and run any tests they want on it. I hope they do and look forward to hearing what other people find.<br /><br />Oh, and at the suggestion of someone else on the LFF comment thread I did take the majority and expenses data and quickly run it through a Spearman's Rank test online which suggested a "weak positive correlation".Mark Thompsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00744387583593537268noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3881762807913180318.post-4834931510686762972010-02-05T15:10:58.058+00:002010-02-05T15:10:58.058+00:00I'll repeat what I wrote on LFF.
You're u...I'll repeat what I wrote on LFF. <br />You're using the wrong measure for seat safety - the size of the majority means very little if you don't take into account what proportion of the electorate that is. In short you need to use Percentage swing versus some other variable (eg amount claimed/amount claimed as a percentage of total possible claim etc). I also have to agree with above poster that a scatter plot would then be a better way to represent the resulting graph. Why the quartiles?emilyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18183048420923051044noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3881762807913180318.post-73559872195421445482010-02-05T11:21:30.174+00:002010-02-05T11:21:30.174+00:00It seems to me that a scatter-plot of individual c...It seems to me that a scatter-plot of individual claims/majorities could be instructive; presumably one could calculate a regression (is that the right word for it?) and come up with a correlation number between majority and expense claim size. *That* would be really interesting.sanbikinoraionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15823745465626270567noreply@blogger.com