BEACHCOMBER

101 YEARS OLD AND STILL DECIMALLY POINTLESS...

DROPPING in at the Department for Pointless Statistics the other day, I found the minister, Sir Hardleigh Cignyphikant, in unusually ebullient mood.

“Delighted to see you, Beachie old chap,” he greeted me. “You’re just in time for our latest release. And even if I do say so myself, it’s something rather special.”

“That’s good to hear,” I said. “What have your figures unveiled.”

“Nothing less than the secret of happiness,” he said, with a smirk. “Just look at the figures,” and he handed me the printout of a spreadsheet with numbers arranged in 12 rows and four columns. “Fascinating,” I said. “What is it?” “Isn’t it obvious?” Sir Hardleigh said. “It’s the monthly figures, from September 2017 to August 2018, for the number of times ‘Trump’, ‘Brexit’, ‘Theresa’ and ‘Chocolate’ have been mentioned in the national press. As you can see, ‘Brexit’ has led for every month except April when it was behind ‘Trump’, and ‘Trump’ has been ahead of ‘Theresa’ in every month of 2018, though ‘Theresa’ beat ‘Trump’ in the last four months of 2017.”

“I have just two questions,” I said: “what does chocolate have to do with Trump, Brexit and Theresa and what does all this have to do with the secret of happiness?”

“Regression,” Sir Hardleigh said, as though that revealed everything. “We chose ‘chocolate’ as a surrogate measure for national happiness, which I think you will agree is as good a choice as any.”

I nodded in agreement and he continued: “So we did a regression analysis to see how the number of times chocolate is related to the number of occurrences of Trump, Brexit and Theresa. And the results clearly point to a way to maximise the chocolate references and therefore the national happiness level.”

“That’s wonderful,” I said admiringly. “Tell me more.”

“Applying a simple multiple linear regression model,” he explained, “we have come up with a best-fit formula to predict the figure for chocolate from those for Trump, Brexit and Theresa:

C = 717.7 + 1.9Th – 4.0Tr – 9.5B where C is chocolate, Th is Theresa, Tr is Trump and B is Brexit. So clearly if we want more chocolate, and therefore more happiness, we must talk less about Trump, much less about Brexit, and rather more about Theresa.”

“This is not Pointless Statistics, but Modern Alchemy,” I said. “You have found a way to turn Trump, Brexit and Theresa into pure chocolate.” And we left it at that.