Publications by free range statistics - R
Seasonality in NZ voting preference? by @ellis2013nz
There was a flurry of activity in the last couple of days on Twitter and the blogosphere, most notably Thomas Lumley’s excellent Stats Chat, relating to whether there is a pro-government bias in surveys of New Zealand voting intention in the summer. As the analysis I’ve seen used my nzelect R package, this motivated me to update it for recent...
6426 sym R (5799 sym/4 pcs) 8 img 1 tbl
Bayesian state space modelling of the Australian 2019 election by @ellis2013nz
So I’ve been back in Australia for five months now. While things have been very busy in my new role at Nous Group, it’s not so busy that I’ve failed to notice there’s a Federal election due some time by November this year. I’m keen to apply some of the techniques I used in New Zealand in the richer data landscape (more polls, for one) a...
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Exploring swings in Australian federal elections by @ellis2013nz
Swings are far from uniform Last week I introduced a Bayesian state space model of two-party-preferred voting intention for Australian federal elections. It treats the surveys from various polling firms as imperfect (potentially systematically imperfect) measurements of an unobserved latent variable of “true” voting intention, which manifests...
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AFL teams Elo ratings and footy-tipping by @ellis2013nz
So now that I live in Melbourne, to blend in with the locals I need to at least vaguely follow the AFL (Australian Football League). For instance, my work like many others has an AFL footy-tipping competition. I was initially going to choose my tips based on wisdom of the crowds (ie choose the favourite) but decided that this was a good occasion ...
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Better predictions for AFL from adjusted Elo ratings by @ellis2013nz
Warning – this post discusses gambling odds and even describes me placing small $5 bets, which I can easily afford to lose. In no way should this be interpreted as advice to anyone else to do the same, and I accept absolutely no liability for anyone who treats this blog post as a basis for gambling advice. If you find yourself losing money at g...
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Better predictions for AFL from adjusted Elo ratings by @ellis2013nz
Warning – this post discusses gambling odds and even describes me placing small $5 bets, which I can easily afford to lose. In no way should this be interpreted as advice to anyone else to do the same, and I accept absolutely no liability for anyone who treats this blog post as a basis for gambling advice. If you find yourself losing money at g...
12404 sym R (11584 sym/5 pcs) 8 img 3 tbl
Website with Australian federal election forecasts by @ellis2013nz
The election forecasts Building on my recent blog posts, I’ve put up a page dedicated to forecasts of the coming Australian federal election. It takes the state space model of two-party-preferred vote from my first blog on polls leading up to this election, and combines it with a more nuanced understanding of the seats actually up for grabs in ...
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Using svglite with web fonts by @ellis2013nz
OK, no stats today, just fidgeting about with graphics devices and type faces. Caveat – the details of graphics formats and typefaces is not my area of real expertise, this blog post is me noting down things that I found useful and others might too. As always, corrections and comments are very welcome. There are two main types of computer graph...
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Animating the US Treasury yield curve rates by @ellis2013nz
My eye was caught by this tweet by Robin Wigglesworth of the Financial Times with an Alan Smith animation of the US Treasury yield curve from 2005 to 2009. It’s a nice graphic and it made me wonder what it would look like over a longer period. The “yield curve” is the name given to the graphic showing the different annual rates paid on inve...
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Familiarisation with the Australian Election Study by @ellis2013nz
The Australian Election Study is an impressive long term research project that has collected the attitudes and behaviours of a sample of individual voters after each Australian federal election since 1987. All the datasets and documentation are freely available. An individual survey of this sort is a vital complement to the necessarily aggregate ...
13648 sym R (25067 sym/5 pcs) 1 tbl