Statistics

 Most of the statistics I look at — or the opinions resulting from statistical evidence — are to do with health or national politics.

When it comes to health, I'm particularly interested in the rôle of diet, since one way or another we do actually have to eat.

I've found it puzzling to see how doctors — proper doctors with degrees and a keen interest in metabolic health, high profile doctors with huge followings — profoundly disagree when it comes to diet. Every way of eating from vegan to carnivore has a cohort of high-profile doctors with huge followings passionately expounding their point of view and backing it up by statistics.

I've listened carefully, tried things out, made comparisons, followed logic, and made my own choices in the end. But it's made me wary of statistics. Yes, "There are lies, damned lies and statistics." So it would seem.

An illustration of the tangled web you can weave with statistics is found in a new set of statistics recently emerging from the statistical swamp about Hastings — the place where I live.

I first came to Hastings when I was nineteen, and I've lived here on and off since I was twenty-two (with brief spells of time living away during my years as a Methodist minister). I'm now sixty-eight, so I've had the opportunity to get to know Hastings well. A lot of poor people live here, and it's something of a sink town. Indeed, I came to live here for that very reason; the houses were a lot cheaper in Hastings than in the surrounding area, so our first family home was here even though my husband's job was twenty-six miles away. 

When my children were teenagers they began to notice the phenomenon that you could be dressed appropriately in Hastings, thinking you looked quite elegant and smart, but if you went on a day out, shopping or to visit relatives, you quickly realised that outside Hastings you looked eccentric or shabby.

It's a poor town. The roads are in bits, the place is full of drug dealers, the council is annually brought to the brink of bankruptcy trying to cope with all the homeless people. But it's also true that kids play out in the streets and women walk home alone at night, and it's a kindly, neighbourly place taken all round.

So I found this recent set of statistics intriguing.

Here's a map of England shaded according to social deprivation. Dark is deprived, light is prosperous,

You see that tiny dark dot down on the south coast, over to the right (east) as you look at the map? That's Hastings. You'll have to click on the image to make Hastings big enough to see.

The images I'm posting are just screen-shots, but where I saw the map originally (it's in this article) it was interactive, so you could check out the place where you live. I hovered on Hastings and it brought up this.

Intrigued, I looked to see the statistics for the area where Hastings is set — Hastings and Rother (the Rother is actually a river that gives its name to the area).

But what are the implications of that? Hastings is "highly deprived", outstandingly so, and deprivation usually goes hand in hand with crime. yet in a recent presentation by Hastings police to members of the borough council, I heard (from my husband who is a councillor and was at the presentation) that the police say crime is down in Hastings and (I'm paraphrasing) everything is lovely.

So I looked up the statistics and found this.

The crime rate is 132% of the national average — mostly made up of violent crime, sexual assault and robberies! Wow! That sounds dangerous. Further searches brought up and agreement that Hastings is the most dangerous place in a wide area. Here's a representative example result from a locksmith.

But my searches also brought up the result that Hastings is the safest major town in East Sussex — as well as being the most dangerous. What? Yes, that's what they say.

A resident sheds a little light, on Reddit (I agree).

Baffled by the statistical evidence that Hastings is simultaneously the safest major town in East Sussex and the most dangerous place in the local area, I asked the Google bots how both these things could be true.

They said this.

So, what they're saying is that compared with other major towns in the area, Hastings is very safe, but since there aren't that many major towns in East Sussex, it's farming country with a lot of little villages and small market towns, if you compare Hastings with the Sussex hamlets and villages, it's comparatively unsafe. All that tells us, I suspect, is that urban locations are usually more dangerous than country villages, which is not astonishing — especially as the houses in the country villages cost a lot more, so the residents have more comfortable and well-ordered lives.

But just to double-check, I asked the Google bots again this morning if Hastings really is the safest place in East Sussex. And they said this.

So Google searches have told me — all based on statistics — that Hastings both is and is not the safest place in East Sussex, that it is the most dangerous place in East Sussex but also the safest major town.

What I take away from this brief foray into statistics about something where I actually have substantial personal experience, is that statistics are useful for politicians or to win an argument, but of little or no use in navigating my way through life. Personal experience is better.

I suspect you are not surprised.