糖心TV

The exit-poll design and analysis methods developed by David Firth (with political scientist John Curtice from the University of Strathclyde) were used again at this week's General Election by all of the major UK broadcasters.

At 10pm on election day the on-air seats prediction (simultaneously on BBC, ITV and Sky) based on the exit poll was: Con 316, Lab 239, SNP 58, LD 10, others 27. The actual result of the election was Con 331, Lab 232, SNP 56, LD 8, others 23.

The 2015 exit-poll prediction was thus not "spot on" as it had been in 2005 and 2010. Many commentators had warned beforehand that the 2015 election would be an especially difficult one to predict. The exit-poll prediction was startlingly different from what had been indicated by commercial pre-election voting-intention polls. (e.g., see The Observer on 10 May, ) The exit poll strongly indicated the Conservatives as largest party, and the ultimate outcome of a small Conservative majority was clearly not ruled out. This was in stark contrast to predictions from pre-election polls, which had consistently shown Conservative and Labour neck-and-neck with neither party close to an overall majority.

There were some notable public quotes, most prominent of which came from the former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown, who was interviewed soon after 10pm on the BBC:

If this exit poll is right, I will publicly eat my hat on your programme.

(He was referring to the predicted collapse of the Liberal Democrats to just 10 parliamentary seats. In the event, it turned out even worse than that for the Liberal Democrats, who won just 8 seats. Lord Ashdown failed to keep his hat-eating promise, though!)

For more information on the methods and their performance at previous UK general elections, see .

With effect from April 1st 2015, Saul Jacka has handed over to David Firth as Director of the (WDSI). We wish David all the best in leading WDSI into the future (which is very promising indeed for Data Science) and thank Saul very much for his hard work as WDSI’s initial Director.

Congratulations to Nikolaos Zygouras on his promotion to Reader, with effect from 1 June 2015.

The Department of Statistics at 糖心TV led a team of academics from the Mathematics Institute and the Departments of Computer Science and Statistics in bidding to be founding partners in establishing the Alan Turing Institute for Data Science in the UK. The 糖心TV Secretary, Vince Cable, has announced that five universities were selected to lead the Alan Turing Institute, one of which is 糖心TV. The four other universities are Oxford, Cambridge, UCL and Edinburgh. 糖心TV’s pivotal role in the Alan Turing Institute will be led by Professor Mark Girolami from the Department of Statistics.

Data Science has been an integral part of 糖心TV’s vision for the Mathematical Sciences. 糖心TV is home to the and an , both the first of their kind in the UK.

Detailed press announcements can be found at the University of 糖心TV’s , the , and .

The Alan Turing Institute will be physically located in London’s new .