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Arthur Turrell

@arthurturrell.bsky.social
887 followers 636 following 261 posts

Economic data scientist and author. Currently @ No10, formerly ONS & Bank. Book on nuclear fusion, 'The Star Builders', out now with S&S/W&N. Views my own. Website: www.aeturrell.com

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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
www.ft.com/content/560f... Great to see this come out—I know incredible levels of hard work have gone into it. More broadly, it's... quite the change in narrative of what has happened to the UK economy over the last 2 decades. May suggest different policies too (targeting hours)
ft.com
UK productivity grew twice as fast as thought after 2008 financial crisis
New official figures put Britain more in line with peer countries in terms of output per hour worked
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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
There’s a lot of doom & gloom around how AI is affecting higher education. To a certain extent, I get it. AI is making some things harder. But I’ve found that AI has in some ways greatly enhanced my teaching. For one, it’s opened up applied activities that weren’t possible before. One example: 🧵
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Today, my Google colleagues and I published work led by @mihaicod.bsky.social on AI in Science, drawing on 15 million Gemini interactions, 2,600 specialised AI models & a 600-scientist survey. What did we find about how AI is changing science? Read on...
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
How can AI help statistics? And why, with everything going on, should you care? "Statistics and Stupidly Smart AI" was filmed @rigb.org & based on my year visiting schools to talk stats for @royalstatsoc.bsky.social You'll be amazed at what AI can do from a laptop! www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0CY...
youtube.com
Can AI fix Britain's broken statistics? | with Arthur Turrell
YouTube video by The Royal Institution
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Our team has today released a huge analysis of the AI economy as seen through 15 million aggregated and de-identified human-AI interactions across the Gemini App, AI Mode, and the Gemini API. Most comprehensive look at how real people are using AI at scale yet! blog.google/innovation-a...
blog.google
Understanding the AI economy
We’re releasing the first Activity, Task, Landscape, and Adoption Study (ATLAS) report, showing how people use Google’s AI tools.
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
After over a decade (!) in the public sector, at the Bank of England, No10, the ONS, and even the Fed Board, I'm starting a new role at Google working on the economics of AI. For me, how AI will reshape the economy is the biggest and most exciting topic in the world right now! Watch this space!
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Press on the no10 Innovation Fellows scheme, which I have just left. To improve the UK, we need to bring a wide range of talent into gov. I was stunned by the commitment, energy, and talent of my colleagues on this scheme: every dept should have one! www.ft.com/content/4df5...
ft.com
The ‘innovators and disrupters’ hired to bring AI to the UK public sector
Government fellowship scheme places tech experts on ‘high-impact tours of duty’ to improve services
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Over the last 12 months, I've been visiting schools as a @royalstatsoc.bsky.social William Guy Lecturer talking about statistics & how AI could help improve them Tomorrow, 7pm, I'll be @rigb.org to do the same with demos, stats, & LOTS of AI Get a ticket & come along! www.rigb.org/whats-on/sta...
rigb.org
Statistics and stupidly smart AI
Statistician Arthur Turrell explores how we can separate bad data from good, how it impacts decisions, and w
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Royal Statistical Society @royalstatsoc.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
We're really looking forward to this event with @arthurturrell.bsky.social, our brilliant William Guy Lecturer and member of the RSS Education Advisory group
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Royal Institution @rigb.org · 22/06/2026
How can AI improve statistics and take the pulse of our nation in new ways? Statistician @arthurturrell.bsky.social will illuminate how AI can be used in a considerate manner, for better data.
rigb.org
Statistics and stupidly smart AI
Statistician Arthur Turrell explores how we can separate bad data from good, how it impacts decisions, and w
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Come and work @downingstreet as a data scientist! We're hiring for a data scientist working on health and education. You'll be right at the heart of UK policy making and (IMO) working with the best tech stack in the UK public sector. Link: www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/jobs.cgi...
civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk
Quick Check Needed
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
I'm currently on iPlayer! Catch me about 13 minutes into this episode of The Future with @fryrsquared.bsky.social www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis... (All views my own etc!)
bbc.co.uk
The Future with Hannah Fry - Series 1: 4. Nuclear Fusion
It’s the holy grail for limitless clean energy, but will nuclear fusion come soon enough to avoid the worst of the climate crisis?
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Dariia Mykhailyshyna @dariia.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
Reminder that this workshop by @arthurturrell.bsky.social has been rescheduled to next week (May 7) and you can still register! #EconSky #AcademicSky
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
This looks like a spectacular public good #econsky (Full disclosure: @packlesshepherd.bsky.social is a co-author but my main skin in the game is maybe we'll finally finish our paper together now...) github.com/Davidvandijc...
github.com
GitHub - Davidvandijcke/coarse
Contribute to Davidvandijcke/coarse development by creating an account on GitHub.
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
Given building software is now cheap, asked someone what would make biggest difference to their public sector job: "Outlook not crashing all the time". Enterprise Microsoft IT people: do you outright block other front-ends (eg Thunderbird) or would it be possible to have both in secure envs?
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Evergreen 👇
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Dariia Mykhailyshyna @dariia.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
❗️Our next workshop will be on March 26th , 6 pm CET on Accelerate your research: reproducible and efficient analysis in Python by @arthurturrell.bsky.social Register or sponsor a student by donating to support Ukraine! Details: bit.ly/3wBeY4S Please share! #AcademicSky #EconSky
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
sites.google.com/view/dariia-... Hey everyone, how'd you like to learn about reproducibility and efficiency with Python code AND support Ukraine? Well, on Thursday evening at 18:00 - 20:00 CET you can! For just 20€ (more if you like) you can join an online class. More details at the link
sites.google.com
Dariia Mykhailyshyna - Workshops for Ukraine
Feedback on the past workshops (if you want to learn how to make wordclouds, check out Text Data Analysis workshop below)
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Alex @s3alfisc.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
I am very excited that PyFixest 0.50.0 is on PyPi, including a new graph-based solver for demeaning that makes fixed effects estimation in PyFixest significantly faster for "sparse" fixed effects structures.
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Ten extremely useful command line tools for 2026! 👇 aeturrell.com/blog/posts/t...
aeturrell.com
Arthur Turrell
Arthur Turrell is an economic data scientist.
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
The burger sauce merger www.ft.com/content/e7e6... Unilever and Kraft Heinz held talks over food merger uniting ketchup and mayo
ft.com
Unilever and Kraft Heinz held talks over food merger uniting ketchup and mayo
Exploration of deal worth tens of billions of dollars reflects struggle of both companies to combat subdued demand
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
New blog post: **The era of local agents is here** In which I argue that, thanks to Qwen3.5, running agentic LLMs on a laptop is now not only possible but works pretty well aeturrell.com/blog/posts/e...
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
New book chapter in The Economy As A Complex Evolving System IV. It's about how data science/AI can help policymakers understand increasingly complex economies. But the whole volume is an absolute treasure trove and it's 2026, so all chapters are gold open access! www.sfipress.org/books/eecs-iv
sfipress.org
The Economy as an Evolving Complex System IV — SFI Press
Today’s global economy is undergoing profound structural transformations. These changes are complex, adaptive, and path-dependent—precisely the kind of dynamics that a complexity-science approach to e...
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Found this book, can't wait to learn how to build a successful business
Business for Punks
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Boris @borismingay.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
2026 Reading List - Book #4: 'The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet' by @arthurturrell.bsky.social He uses accessible analogies to unpack plasmas, magnetic confinement, inertial confinement, and the immense engineering challenges in reaching net-energy gain. #booksky 📚
aeturrell.com
Arthur Turrell — The Star Builders
Arthur Turrell is an economic data scientist.
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
For the first time EVER, I've got a guest post on my blog! Katie Russell, my colleague @ no10, has written about reading (odo)meters using the latest AI vision models running locally on a laptop: aeturrell.com/blog/posts/v...
aeturrell.com
Arthur Turrell
Arthur Turrell is an economic data scientist.
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
Excellent post on UK public sector's most successful open source tool: Splink. Which got me thinking... 1. open source is underrated as way for one gov dept to find tools that another gov dept has usefully developed. Web search > internal coordination! 2. 👇 mojdigital.blog.gov.uk/2026/02/24/s...
mojdigital.blog.gov.uk
Splink or Swim: The Benefits of Being Small Enough To Fail
A behind-the-scenes look at winning the Civil Service innovation award  Suppose the Civil Service embarked on an ambitious project to create software that would be used widely in government and beyond...
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Today, Skimpy has hit 500 stars on GitHub! 🎉 Skimpy summarises info about datasets quickly and efficiently, either in Python or on the command line (for CSVs). Cool new features: - export summary table to text, html, or svg - cli tool now sniffs csv files Docs here: aeturrell.github.io/skimpy/
aeturrell.github.io
Skimpy
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 23/02/2026
Good news here for working with geospatial data: parquet.apache.org/blog/2026/02...
parquet.apache.org
Native Geospatial Types in Apache Parquet
Native Geospatial Types in Apache Parquet
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
There's a lot of news out there rn, probably so much that you're distracted from thinking about data analysis. As an antidote, why not try out Skimpy, a Python package for data analysis? It has 496 stars on GitHub: we just need a few more to hit 500. That could be you! ⭐️ github.com/aeturrell/sk...
github.com
GitHub - aeturrell/skimpy: skimpy is a light weight tool that provides summary statistics about variables in data frames within the console.
skimpy is a light weight tool that provides summary statistics about variables in data frames within the console. - aeturrell/skimpy
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
Excited to be a part of the initiative to "Move Fast and Fix Things", announced in Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister's speech today. One measure is an expansion of the No10 Innovation Fellowship, for which we've launched a new website! fellows.ai.gov.uk Speech: www.gov.uk/government/s...
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
Interested in what we've been up to at Downing Street? Tune in to Today on BBC Radio 4 at 08:10 this morning!
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Saloni @scientificdiscovery.dev · 08/01/2026
The cost of sequencing a human genome has fallen over 100,000 fold in nominal terms since 2001. In a new visualization, I've added some of the key advances in sequencing during that timeline:
Line chart showing the dramatic decline in the cost of sequencing a human genome from 2001 to 2022, plotted on a logarithmic dollar scale. The vertical axis shows cost per genome in U.S. dollars, ranging from over $100 million down to about $500, and the horizontal axis shows year. Costs start near $100 million in 2001 during the Human Genome Project, fall gradually to around $10 million by 2005, then drop sharply after 2007 with the introduction of next-generation sequencing technologies. By 2011 costs fall below $10,000, reach around $1,000 by 2017, and continue decreasing to a few hundred dollars by the early 2020s. Annotations mark major technological milestones such as Illumina short-read sequencing, Ion Torrent semiconductor sequencing, PacBio real-time sequencing, Oxford Nanopore’s MinION, and completion of an end-to-end human genome map.
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
Lovely finishing plug for @dianecoyle1859.bsky.social's book at #ASSA2026 from the panel on government statistics!
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Ben Casselman @bencasselman.bsky.social · 05/01/2026
Former BLS commissioner Bill Beach says the agency has lost 25% of its staff since January. 40% of leadership positions are vacant. And DOL leadership “does not seem to support the Bureau.” #ASSA2026 #EconSky
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
Hello #ASSA2026 attendees! Interested in better nowcasting? We have a top line-up of speakers on the latest and best ways to gauge the state of the economy in real-time at: 🎤 Next Gen Nowcasting: Signatures, Distributions, and Simplified Workflows 📍309 🕣 Sunday, 14:30 EST #econsky
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
Heading to #ASSA2026? Interested in gauging the state of the economy in real-time—even during crises? Then come to... 🎤 Next Gen Nowcasting: Signatures, Distributions, and Simplified Workflows 📍309 🕣 Sunday, 14:30 EST eppro01.ativ.me/appinfo.php?... #ASSA2026 #econsky
eppro01.ativ.me
ASSA 2026
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
New working paper: nowcasting using regression on signatures! We introduce a new method of nowcasting that uses mathematical objects called signatures. Regression on signatures subsumes the linear Kalman filter & is more robust to disruptions in data series 😍 #econsky arxiv.org/abs/2305.102...
arxiv.org
Nowcasting using regression on signatures
We introduce a new method of nowcasting using regression on path signatures. Path signatures capture the geometric properties of sequential data. Because signatures embed observations in continuous ti...
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
"Mastery of technology must infuse everything we do,” she will say. “We must be as comfortable with lines of code as we are with human sources, as fluent in Python as we are in multiple languages.” New head of MI6 #python www.ft.com/content/5cbe...
ft.com
Russia is ‘exporting chaos’, new head of Britain’s spy agency MI6 warns
In her first public remarks since taking office, Blaise Metreweli will also say that UK support for Ukraine is ‘enduring’
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
If I can tell someone hasn't hand-painted the graphs on their slides instead of using software, it taints them and makes them look sloppy and cheap.
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
Those of us giving talks on generative AI 😬
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Alex @s3alfisc.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Our py-econometrics org has a new package: `maketables` is now installable from PyPi! You can create regression tables for PyFixest, statsmodels, linearmodels, and save them as html, latex, or word. github: github.com/py-econometr... docs: py-econometrics.github.io/maketables/
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
Hey #econsky, We keep hearing about ticket resellers being a problem. Artists charge $ and resellers use bots to buy tickets in bulk, selling them for $$$. What if econ can help? Here's one little trick to stop ticket resellers. aeturrell.com/blog/posts/o...
aeturrell.com
Arthur Turrell
Arthur Turrell is an economic data scientist.
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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
Government has published one of those quiet but important documents that might get overlooked as it is not 'newsy'. The headline finding is that £1 of public R&D investment generates £8 in net economic benefits for the UK over the long term www.gov.uk/government/p...
gov.uk
The value of public R&D
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
Just yesterday I was on a panel with colleagues from @bankofcanada.ca & @banquedefrance-off.bsky.social and we were discussing the risks of central banks NOT being multi cloud / only using a single provider. I didn't expect to have such a clear example of how those risks could crystallise so soon.
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
Spoiled for implausibly cringe characters right now; new series of Alan Partridge, and newcomer "Peston" now showing on itv
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Eric Hittinger @elephanteating.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
Folks, it is the year 2025 and Word's grammar checker is suggesting that I should change "fewer" to "less few".
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
BlueSky data hive mind! Are there any OPEN sets of image data taken from wearables? (I know some exist on secure systems.) #data #rstats #pydata #econsky @odihq.bsky.social @opendatawatch.com Asking for this: aeturrell.com/blog/posts/r...
aeturrell.com
Arthur Turrell
Arthur Turrell is an economic data scientist.
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Jakob Schneebacher @jschneebacher.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
Attention IO job market candidates: Sometimes speakers in the CMA's external economics seminar series have to cancel at relatively short notice. We would love for these slots to go to JMCs to present their job market paper. Drop me a message if you are interested or share with those who might be.
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Arthur Turrell @arthurturrell.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
Really useful and important work on more granular estimates of the productivity of UK industrial segments here by Cliodhna and @joshmartinecon.bsky.social www.productivity.ac.uk/research/lab... #econsky
productivity.ac.uk
Labour productivity estimates for detailed industries in the UK, 2009 to 2023 - The Productivity Institute
Research constructing labour productivity estimates for 184 industries spanning the entire UK economy – more than double the granularity available from official datasets.
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