Chart of the week: Britain’s neolithic statistics

It’s no surprise official statistics are subject to substantial revisions many years after they were first published.

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in Features

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"In this era of Big Data, UK statistics-gathering is neolithic," writes Philip Aldrick in The Times. Data on inflation is "collected by researchers wandering around shops with a clipboard". Employment figures rely on household questionnaires.

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Marina Gerner

Marina Gerner is an award-winning journalist and columnist who has written for the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Economist, The Guardian and Standpoint magazine in the UK; the New York Observer in the US; and die Bild and Frankfurter Rundschau in Germany.


Marina is also an adjunct professor at the NYU Stern School of Business at their London campus, and has a PhD from the London School of Economics.


Her first book, The Vagina Business, deals with the potential of “femtech” to transform women’s lives, and will be published by Icon Books in September 2024.


Marina is trilingual and lives in London.