2015-10

More documents

Recommendations

Info

F urniture R epolishing S ervices FRENCH POLISHING Old or modern furniture restored to as-new condition From a coffee table top to complete dining suite No job too small - free collection and delivery Insurance work undertaken - any colour or finish Call Dan for a FREE no obilgation quote Tel: 07789 804852 Email: danandjane@hotmail.com Painter & Decorator DIY work also undertaken. A professional service at an affordable price. Local, reliable & trustworthy 20 years of experience No job too small Fully insured Contact Neal of Inspirations 0114 255 9205 or 07868 745980 An Unlikely When I tell people that I am a statistician, they mostly tell me they were never any good at maths. One person, when told I was a medical statistician, asked if I counted hospital beds for a living! People are always quick to remind me of the quotation, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics”, a phrase commonly attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, but probably of much earlier origin. The idea that statistics may be used to support dubious arguments is, of course, not very fl attering to my profession. I much prefer the words of an eminent Victorian social reformer, one of the earliest recognised statisticians, who said, “To understand God’s thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of his purpose.” Rather surprisingly, this person was none other than Florence Nightingale, much better known for her works of compassion among the injured soldiers of the Crimean War and for being the founder of the modern profession of nursing. But she was also the fi rst female Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. To her, statistics, compassion and faith went side by side. Always able at mathematics, Florence believed she was called by God both to nursing and to the study of statistics. Long before she went to the Crimea, she came to believe that studying statistics was the surest way of learning God’s plan and then acting in accordance with it. This divine calling gave much needed respectability to her study; in those days, intellectual pursuits like statistics were not regarded as respectable for an upper-middle class woman like her (or, indeed, any woman). On her arrival at Scutari Barracks (now Üsküdar) in Turkey in 1854, when Britain entered the Crimean War, Florence was horrifi ed, not only by the lack of resources in the military hospitals but also by the inadequate record keeping that went S St Chad’s Church, Linden Avenue, Woodseats Church Offi ce: 9 Linden Avenue, Sheffi eld S8 0GA Tel: (0114) 274 5086 Page <strong>10</strong> email: offi ce@stchads.org website: www.stchads.org
Statistician on. Even numbers of deaths were not accurately recorded, never mind their causes. By collecting data, Florence was able to show more soldiers were dying from disease than from their wounds. Today we are accustomed to seeing data presented in all kinds of charts, but this was not common in the mid-Victorian era. Florence devised a polar-area diagram (a bit like a modern pie chart) to show the causes of death month by month in the army in the East. Only after a Sanitary Commission arrived in Turkey in 1855 did death rates really begin to fall. Studying the statistics changed Florence’s understanding of the problems in the army hospitals; she realised that it was poor sanitation rather than lack of resources which caused so many deaths. On her return to England she enlisted the help of other statisticians to explore how many people had died, and why. Many of her findings shocked her. For example, she discovered that even in peacetime, soldiers in England died at twice the rate of civilians. She began to campaign for reform of the Army Medical Service, writing an 830- page report and securing the support of Prince Albert to establish a Royal Commission. The changes she set in motion altered the design and practice of military hospitals for ever; by 1900, army mortality was lower than civilian mortality. Florence often worked herself to exhaustion and this, combined with the effects of a disease she caught in the Crimea, led her to become reclusive. But a relative wrote that when Florence was exhausted, the sight of a column of figures was “perfectly reviving to her”. She did not limit her work to army hospitals. She studied London’s hospital statistics and found that not only was data collection unreliable but little useful information was collected. Florence sent a letter to the 1860 International Congress of Statistics advocating the uniform collection of hospital statistics. The delegates took up her proposal which used a uniform classification of diseases and operations and formed the basis of the International Classification of Diseases used today. The work Florence and others did underpins much of modern medical statistics and evidence-based healthcare. Perhaps she should be remembered for her statistical skills just as much as her nursing reforms. Karen Kilner See www.sciencenews.org/pictures/mathtrek/112608/ nightingale.swf for an animated version of Florence’s data. St Chad’s Church, Linden Avenue, Woodseats Church Office: 9 Linden Avenue, Sheffield S8 0GA Tel: (0114) 274 5086 Page 11 email: office@stchads.org website: www.stchads.org
Page 1 and 2: October/November 2015 WOODSEATS •
Page 3 and 4: Despite never having been very good
Page 5 and 6: After a maths test, the teacher cal
Page 7 and 8: Send details of your event to impac
Page 9: Christmas The Abbey Public House ye
Page 13 and 14: Your memories of maths from school
Page 15 and 16: and The Short of It! although Edwar
Page 17 and 18: What is the difference between ‘z
Page 19 and 20: I struggle to remember numbers incl
Page 21 and 22: 100 days on just a bowl of rice, pr
Page 23 and 24: Ask a teenager to ‘dial a number
Page 25 and 26: in the Refugee Crisis Tearfund is a
Page 27 and 28: Number Cruncher Across 1. Nine time
Page 29 and 30: Services during October & November
Page 31 and 32: St Chad’s Church, Linden Avenue,

2015-10

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?