March 27, 2012

Why isn’t this libel?

By

The Dominion Post has a story,  nominated for Stat of the Week, headlined “Wairarapa has best odds for tonight’s $22m Powerball”.

If this were true, it would imply serious fraud or incompetence by the people running Powerball.  The story doesn’t come out and say that explicitly.  What it says is

Sales and prize data provided to The Dominion Post by the Lotteries Commission show the Wairarapa region averaged the highest return per dollar spent last year.

which is, of course, would be irrelevant to future odds in any honest and competent lottery.  So why does the Dominion Post mention it here?  Is this a subtle accusation? Do they not understand how lotteries work? Or do they just think you don’t?
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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »

Comments

  • avatar
    Graeme Edgeler

    Because we abolished libel years ago?

    Because the category of people covered is too broad for it to defame any one of them?

    #lawchat

    12 years ago

  • avatar
    Amelia White

    Wait, was it last year that that family won the $30m powerball there?
    Would that not skew the results somewhat?

    12 years ago

  • avatar
    Shane Baylis

    Or, if the trend is stable, maybe people in the Wairarapa are better at picking numbers than people in general (who have predictable biases in their number-choice), and so share their winnings with fewer people?

    I mean, it’s unlikely, but I bet it’d be arguable in court.

    12 years ago

  • avatar
    Luis

    It is probably that for small population regions the impact of one/few big wins will have a much larger effect on the earnings/expenditure ratio.

    12 years ago

  • avatar
    DetMackey

    It could be worse: the Dominion Post could have said that the Wairarapa’s historical good luck means it’s in for a period of bad. Just to even to even it all out.

    12 years ago

  • avatar
    Steve Black

    I keep wondering why the Herald chooses to publish this fluff. It takes somebody to write it and a (sub)editor to choose to give in column space on the page. The draw from Powerball is a random event, but an article appearing on the page of a newspaper is a carefully considered act with several people involved. What is the payoff for the Herald?

    I was going to nominate the latest Powerball fluff article (somebody beat me to it by half an hour) and in doing so I did a search on Powerball on the Herald site:

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/powerball/search/results.cfm?kw1=powerball&kw2=&st=gsa

    The number of hits is surprised me. I bet the number of mentions in a week in the Herald correlates with the magnitude of the Powerball prize.

    12 years ago