October 3, 2011

Stat of the Week Winner: September 24-30 2011

This week we’ve chosen Jeremy Greenbrook-Held’s nomination of this graph found on political blog The Standard:

Many have been criticising the graph, including David Farrar, those in the comments on The Standard and a blog post on Stuff, and here’s a summary of the main concerns:

  1. Using cumulative figures, making it appear as though the rate of emigration is increasing.
  2. Starting the graph at zero makes it appear as though no-one emigrated prior to John Key becoming Prime Minister.
  3. The graph uses gross migration rather than net migration
  4. Not displaying historial emigration data for comparison

David Farrar created a graph which addresses points 3 and 4 above:

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