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Greetings All! One must try to do one's best with the information one is provided with. So I have just done some basis Radical Statistics on a press report. I have divided one number by another, looked at the result, and raised my eyebrows (as one does). According to the East Anglian Daily Times this morning: http://tinyurl.com/hh53v4m "Ipswich Hospital spends £11m on agency staff in a year to tackle 'spike in demand'" Specifically (I quote): "Ipswich Hospital spent £11,421,000 on agency staff in one year, new figures reveal." [...] "Nearly 11,000 nursing shifts (10,933) were covered by agency staff during the same period." So that looks like £11421000/10933 = £1044.64 per nursing shift. At this point I duly raised my eyebrows. If you interpret "one shift" as (say) 10 hours worked by one nurse, who is unlikely to be personally paid more than £200 for it, then that would imply that the agency pockets over £800 for that one shift worked by one nurse. Or perhaps "one shift" means a specific 10-hour shift period during which several nurses may work simultaneously. In that case the "£1044.64 per shift" could be spread over an average of (say) 5 or 6 nurses per shift period over the year in question, so about £200 per nurse per shift period. That now looks more reasonable. However, 10,933 such shift periods in one year then needs some explanation. Maybe "a specific 10-hour shift period" applies to a particular speciality, such as Eye/Cardiovascular/etc., so over the range of specialities we can have two or more such shift periods simultaneously. But there is nothing whatever in that EADT article which helps to resolve such an ambiguity! No source is cited. So (a) I'm attempting to entertain you RadStats folk with yet another example of the inadequacy/incompetence of media reporting of statistics; and (b) asking if any of you know what's really happening, and can provide a more specifically informative answer (which I am indeed interested to know). Best wishes to all, Ted. ------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <[log in to unmask]> Date: 14-Jun-2016 Time: 10:33:38 This message was sent by XFMail ------------------------------------------------- ****************************************************** Please note that if you press the 'Reply' button your message will go only to the sender of this message. If you want to reply to the whole list, use your mailer's 'Reply-to-All' button to send your message automatically to [log in to unmask] Disclaimer: The messages sent to this list are the views of the sender and cannot be assumed to be representative of the range of views held by subscribers to the Radical Statistics Group. To find out more about Radical Statistics and its aims and activities and read current and past issues of our newsletter you are invited to visit our web site www.radstats.org.uk. *******************************************************