Opinion Poll Statistician

摘要

Bess Kemp works as a statistician for National Opinion Polls, the people who survey us to find, out what we buy, what we watch, what we think. She tells all. I have been a statistician with National Opinion Polls— NOP or GfK/NOP to give it in full—for 9 years now. Before that I was with the British Market Research Board (BMRB), which is a similar sort of agency, but smaller. Statistics wasn't my degree; I did economics and maths at Coventry, and then, because I am a Londoner by birth, came back to London to temp. One of those temping jobs was with, what was then, the Monopoly and Mergers Commission—now it is the Competition Commission. It was there that the word "research" entered my consciousness. It sounded interesting: I had always wanted to do analysis but I was never sure what sort. But at Monopolies and Mergers they set me to doing statistical analysis of survey data, which was my first introduction to it. I used the statistics I had learned as part of my Maths (Pure and Statistics) A level, and some that I had covered at university, in macro-economic modelling, which I had enjoyed. It was all about the application of mathematics, which I found more interesting than theoretical maths. That's why I chose the course.