This is the official website of SNTL,

the statistical consulting part of Nick Longford's professional activities.

Established: January 2001. Web presence: June 2004.


Email: NTL@SNTL.co.uk

I am at

Departament d'Economia i Empresa
Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF)
Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27
08005 Barcelona, Spain



Supporting materials for Studying Human Populations: An Advanced Course in Statistics
(Springer-Verlag, New York, 2008).


SNTL business - areas of expertise:

  • incomplete (missing) data

  • small-area estimation

  • longitudinal analysis

  • statistical modelling (including addressing model uncertainty)

  • analysis of very large datasets (including surveys) and data mining

  • analysis of small datasets for which maximum likelihood is inefficient; using prior information and utilities

  • design of surveys and other studies

  • decision theory

  • clinical trials (beyond hypothesis testing)

  • modern statistical computing and graphics (Splus and R)

  • being an expert witness (civil and criminal law)

  • professional training



    Applications in:

  • local and central government statistics

  • epidemiology & biostatistics

  • economics

  • marketing

  • pharmaceutical research and development

  • high-quality manufacturing and production

  • statistics in civil and criminal law

  • technical (statistical and data-based related) audit


    • Business perspective

    Statistics is the business and science of making intelligent decisions in the presence of uncertainty


    A photo and motto


    Recent publications

    Allocating a limited budget to small areas,
    in Journal of Indian Society for Agricultural Statistics 66, 31-41, 2012.

    A revised school effectiveness analysis,
    in Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics 37, 157-179, 2012.

    An assessment of empirical Bayes and composite estimators,
    in Statistical Modelling 10, 137-157, 2011.

    Well-being and obesity of rheumatoid arthritis patients, (with C. Nicodemo, M. Nunez and E. Nunez)
    in Health Services and Outcomes Research Methodology 11, 27-43, 2011.

    Policy-related small-area estimation,
    Working Paper No. 2011-44, CEPS/INSTEAD, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, 2011.

    Mixture models with an improper component. (with P. D'Urso)
    Journal of Applied Statistics 38, 2511-2521, 2011.


    To appear

    Assessment of precision with aversity to overstatement,
    in South African Journal of Statistics, 2012/13.

    Handling the limit of detection by extrapolation,
    in Statistics in Medicine 31, 2012.

    Mixtures of autoregressions with an improper component for panel data
    (with P. D'Urso), in Journal of Classification 29, 2012.

    Poverty and inequality in European regions, (with G. Pittau, R. Zelli and R. Massari)
    in Journal of Applied Statistics 39, 2012.

    'Which model?' is the wrong question, in Statistica Neerlandica 66, 2012.

    Comparing random samples, with uncertainty about priors and utilities,
    in Scandinavian Journal of Statistics 39, 2012. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9469.2011.00743.x

    Small-sample estimators of the quantiles of the normal, lognormal and Pareto distributions about priors and utilities,
    in Journal of Statistical Computing and Simulation 82, 2012. DOI: 10.1080/00949655.2011.582872


    In the works

    Statistical Applications of Decision Theory, a monograph for Springer-Verlag (Springer Briefs).

    Presentations

  • Clusters defined by distinct correlation structures.
    Presented at the International Classification Conference 2011, University of St. Andrews, Scotland; July 2011.

  • Analysis of a study of rheumatoid arhritis by the potential outcomes framework.
    Presented at the 13th Spanish Biometric Conference and 3rd Ibero-American Meeting, Barcelona, Spain; September 2011.

    Policy-related small-area estimation.
    Invited talk at the 7th Conference on Survey Sampling in Economic and Social Research,
    Katowice, Poland, September 2011.

    Random Coefficient Models and R
    A course for postgraduate students in the Department of Civil Engineering and Statistics,
    Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia. November 2011.

    Small-area estimation.
    Seminar given in the Department of Statistics, Universidad Nacional, Medellin,
    Department of Civil Engineering and Statistics,
    Universidad del Valle, Colombia, December 2011.

    Statistics without hypothesis testing.
    Paper presented at the Workshop on The Controversy in Hypothesis Testing, UNED Madrid, December 2011.

    Two seminars on small-area estimation, Manchester University, England, March 2012.


    Current projects

    Decision theory and utilities for elementary statistical problems - including a Springer monograph

    Effective use of prior information in small studies, including meta-analysis

    The problem of looking for a few needles in a haystack

    Composite estimation; small-area estimation

    Application of the potential outcomes framework in epidemiology

    Finite mixtures models (with an improper component)


    Recent whereabouts

    July 2011 - ICC 2011 Conference, St. Andrews, Scotland

    September 2011 - Czech Republic (VSE Prague/Jindrichuv Hradec) and Poland (Conference on Survey Sampling, Katowice)

    November - December 2011 - Universidad de Valle, Cali, Colombia

    December 2011 - Conference on The Controversy about Hypothesis Testing, UNED, Madrid, Spain

    March 2012 - Two seminars at the University of Manchester, England

    May and June 2012 - CEPS/INSTEAD, Esch-Belval, Luxembourg

    May 2012 - Seminar at the Centre for Transport Research, Brno, Czech Republic

    July and August - University of Economics in Prague, Jidrichuv Hradec Campus, Czech Republic
    Work on a monograph about EU-SILC analysis (income and poverty in European countries)

    Javier Palacios, my student (supervised jointly with Michael Greenacre), successfully defended his PhD. thesis entitled
    Adoption and Discontinuance of Innovations on 7th October 2011 at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona)


    Further back in time (and details)


    May 2012