WITH May 7 looming, what could be more topical than the thoughts of a student of elections and voting trends?

Mathematician Eveline Pye ponders the statistical subject in the Scottish context. Her forthcoming pamphlet, Smoke That Thunders (Mariscat), will be launched next month in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

PSEPHOLOGIST

(from Greek, ps�phos for pebble and vote)

I have hands the size of Scotland;

my fingers reach through dense cloud

scoop up bundles of balloon-words

from a thousand interviews.

I mould answers into mountains,

calculate contours

as public opinion surges and slips,

moves like a wave through days.

I am a conduit for the crowd's roar

in a vast virtual amphitheatre;

voters, drowned in data, becalmed

in a fog of facts, listen as I speak.

Do I affect what I only seek to measure:

the observer effect multiplied

on a million screens? I throw a pebble:

a marbled white unfurls its wings.