James Tozer

Many thanks to @MikeHensonBBC for this profile of myself and @gordonhf, and the stats we do for England's rugby team through Prospect Sporting Insights, our consultancy. Including a sly photo of @rstudio running on my sofa during a game! bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-un…

It’s been great fun listening to it all being recorded in Rachel’s study at home, and awesome to see it finally in bookshops around the world.

There have been so many evenings and weekends spent lovingly pulling @takenotesalways together, along with @artemisirvine on the audio editing.

Huge congrats to @rachelsllloyd and @simonakam for the publication of “Always Take Notes: Advice From Some Of The World’s Greatest Writers”. amazon.co.uk/Always-Take-No…

@mikejakeman @Jon_Mackenzie @AFHStewart That would be a decent proxy for how "good" the teams are, but market value is also affected by a lot of other factors (e.g. age). And that's not a measure of how good the actual *play* is: international teams tend to look much less cohesive, even if they have all the stars...

@mikejakeman @Jon_Mackenzie @AFHStewart Mike sorry for slow response - really interesting questions and answers from other people. If you wanted to do a comparison of quality of *players*, you could look at the sum of Transfermarkt estimated value for players in the average World Cup v Champions League team.

If one wanted to compare the quality of the Champions League with the quality of a World Cup, would comparing Elo ratings of competing sides be a credible way to do it? @Jon_Mackenzie @AFHStewart @J_CD_T

@Sondreus @AlexSelbyB Incredible - well done Sondre!

Just won the Future of Media award! Very happy to accept the award for data journalism together with @AlexSelbyB for "The pandemic's true death toll"

Amazing!!

“Devoting a little budget to analytics can save millions on wasted salary” | Exclusive - When Steve Borthwick agreed to join Tigers, he enlisted @J_CD_T and Oval Insights to rebuild the squad using xP models. Leicester’s turnaround is a Moneyball story. telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/20…

One month ago, we called on researchers to send us their best work. Today, I'm happy to say that an @TheEconomist is featuring a "call for papers" submission for the first time: a fascinating study of "wolves’ passports", "enemies of the people", and skills of former prisoners.

For this week's issue of @TheEconomist, I had a look at a gigantic multi-year experiment run by @Twitter. (If you are reading this, you probably participated.)

@pressgazette @tweetCDN Honoured to have my work on "The pandemic's true death toll" shortlisted for "Innovation of the year"! Thanks to all who helped make this project happen.

Very happy to say that @TheEconomist's Data team has launched an open "call for papers" for #research on any topic. We are looking for exciting and important new studies - if that sounds like your work, please send it to us economist.com/graphic-detail…

We're hiring! Come and join @TheEconomist's data team for a six-month traineeship infographics.economist.com/2021/job-data-…

Weekly pandemic update (a thread):

Expected Points (xP) has arrived in rugby union (and in @URCOfficial for public consumption). Here's an interview with @J_CD_T and @gordonhf, who have developed and rolled out a system that is already changing the game in numerous ways. telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/20…

What is the pandemic's true death toll? After months of work, we are launching our daily updating estimate of excess deaths around the world. With official deaths at 4.5m, I estimate the true tally to be between 9.3m and 18.1m, as of today

Of all the brilliant @takenotesalways interviews, I think this episode might be my favourite - a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of sports journalism