(This article was originally published at Gianluca Baio's blog, and syndicated at StatsBlogs.)
In particular, Adrian's talk was about the application of Bayesian hierarchical methods to formally account for and quantify uncertainty in population projections (I think this is the relevant paper). He started his talk by showing a screenshot from the BBC website reporting on Boris Johnson's claim that if the UK stays within the EU, its population will "increase to 80 millions" (from the current level of around 65 millions).
As Adrian pointed out, it wasn't clear what time frame was Johnson referring to. However, I'd say unsurprisingly, his model showed that this event had virtually no chance of happening within the next 5 years and at most around 40% chance of happening in a period of 25 years [I am citing the numbers by memory, so the details may be slightly different, although they are most definitely in the right ball-park!].
Please comment on the article here: Gianluca Baio's blog
