Talk Data To Me

My guest this week is Ben Walker, Senior Data Journalist atthe New Statesman and co-founder of Britain Elects – a website that aggregates election results and polls of people’s voting intentions, and which dabbles, very successfully, in election forecasting. At the 2024 general election, Ben’s model was the one that came closest to predicting the end result, an incredible achievement considering t...

My guest this week is Andy Kirk, an independent expert indata visualisation. Andy is a prolific producer of resources on the how-tos of data viz, including the incredibly useful and beautifully crafted book ‘Data visualisation: a handbook for data-driven design.’ Anyone who’s even dipped atoe into the world of data viz online will have come across Andy and his amazing website visualisingdata.com....

It's just me this week, with a story about digital ID, and the implications of relying on big American tech to deliver it. But this week the focus isn't on the UK, or at least it won't be at first - this week we're in the Netherlands. The full text of this episode also appeared as an article on the Substack page for Talk Data to Me, published on 7 January 2025. Host: Georgina Sturg...

My guest this week is Madeleine Sumption, Director of the Migration Observatory – an independent research organisation based at the University of Oxford which many consider the UK’s most reliable and authoritative source of analysis on migration policy and statistics.  Madeleine is THE voice on migration statistics in the UK, appearing regularly on TV and radio to talk through the latest numbers....

My guest this week is Ed Humpherson, head of the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), the official watchdog for data and statistics in public policy. The OSR is an independent regulator tasked with upholding quality and transparency in UK statistics. Ed's background is in accounting and, before heading up the OSR, he worked at the National Audit Office, where he managed his work on economic and...

My guest this week is Jonathan Portes, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at King’s College London. Prior to becoming an academic, Jonathan had already had a very substantial career in the civil service, which makes him a unique person to talk to about both the technical side of data and how it’s used in the real world by politicians. In his time at the civil service, he worked at the Treasu...