About
Paul Smith joined Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute (S3RI) and the Dept of Social Statistics & Demography in September 2014 and is now Professor of Official Statistics, with a particular interest in sampling, estimation and other statistical methods applied to government statistics. He was Director of S3RI from Jan 2021 - Sep 2022, and was appointed Head of the Department of Social Statistics & Demography from August 2022.
Paul has strong links with the Office for National Statistics, and manages a long-running contract for methodological support with them. He also collaborates with other national statistical offices and government departments, in both research and substantive applications of statistics. Experience from these contacts provide real-world examples which are used in teaching, particularly on the MSc in Data Analytics for Government.
Research
Research interests
- Sampling and estimation methods in official statistics
- Dual system (capture-recapture) estimation in official statistics
- Price indices
- History of official statistics
- Vascular plants and their parasitic fungi (particularly rusts and smuts)
Current research
Paul is currently engaged in projects on sampling errors and other quality indicators for consumer price indices, and on the use of multiple systems estimation for data from administrative sources with different characteristics including missingness, measurement error and partial coverage. He has particular experience with business surveys, and is working on a project to assess the presence of rotation group bias in monthly business surveys.
Research projects
Completed projects
Publications
Supervision
Current PhD Students
Teaching
Paul has taught several modules on the MSc in Data Analytics for Government (MDataGov), which replaced the MSc in Official Statistics (MOffStat). He has extensive experience of working within a national statistical office and of research in official statistics, which provides a wealth of practical examples to support his teaching.
External roles and responsibilities
Biography
Prizes
- Field Mycology Award (2019)
- Neil Findlay Memorial Trophy 2019 (2020)