When is a country not a country?
(When it's the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)

When you are focussing on a data set, it's vital that you check the parameters of the data you are studying. For instance, go to TimeWeb sample data on car registrations and vehicle kilometres travelled.

Have a look at the different data sets and try to differentiate between them on the basis of the explanation that follows.

Britain and the UK

These are in fact one and the same place! Britain is the official abbreviation for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. When you are using these terms to describe the geographical location of a variable, remember that British and the UK mean the same thing.

Great Britain

This term refers only to the mainland of England, Wales and Scotland. If you want the population of Northern Ireland included in your data series, then you need to look for data for Britain or the UK.

England

One of the commonest causes of confusion and, in some cases, of bad feeling, is for England to be used as a synonym for Britain. British people who have Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish nationality are understandably affronted to be taken as being English.

Ulster

This term is used a great deal in the news media as meaning Northern Ireland. But this too is a mistake, because Northern Ireland comprises six counties, whereas the whole of Ulster comprises nine counties.

Check your understanding

Now, you might be keen to try to analyse the change in numbers of new car registrations over a twenty year period, and relate this variable to the change in road traffic in the same period.

So you would choose UK new car registrations (BCGTAU) from the sample data to show growth in cars on the road. But which of the two following variables would you select for vehicle kilometres travelled and why?

• Index of vehicle kms travelled on roads GB (BMCCAU)
• Index of road traffic kms travelled UK (BMCJAU)

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