January 30, 2017

Stat of the Week Competition: January 28 – February 3 2017

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Each week, we would like to invite readers of Stats Chat to submit nominations for our Stat of the Week competition and be in with the chance to win an iTunes voucher.

Here’s how it works:

  • Anyone may add a comment on this post to nominate their Stat of the Week candidate before midday Friday February 3 2017.
  • Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
  • The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of January 28 – February 3 2017 inclusive.
  • Quote the statistic, when and where it was published and tell us why it should be our Stat of the Week.

Next Monday at midday we’ll announce the winner of this week’s Stat of the Week competition, and start a new one.

The fine print:

  • Judging will be conducted by the blog moderator in liaison with staff at the Department of Statistics, The University of Auckland.
  • The judges’ decision will be final.
  • The judges can decide not to award a prize if they do not believe a suitable statistic has been posted in the preceeding week.
  • Only the first nomination of any individual example of a statistic used in the NZ media will qualify for the competition.
  • Individual posts on Stats Chat are just the opinions of their authors, who can criticise anyone who they feel deserves it, but the Stat of the Week award involves the Department of Statistics more officially. For that reason, we will not award Stat of the Week for a statistic coming from anyone at the University of Auckland outside the Statistics department. You can still nominate and discuss them, but the nomination won’t be eligible for the prize.
  • Employees (other than student employees) of the Statistics department at the University of Auckland are not eligible to win.
  • The person posting the winning entry will receive a $20 iTunes voucher.
  • The blog moderator will contact the winner via their notified email address and advise the details of the $20 iTunes voucher to that same email address.
  • The competition will commence Monday 8 August 2011 and continue until cancellation is notified on the blog.
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Rachel Cunliffe is the co-director of CensusAtSchool and currently consults for the Department of Statistics. Her interests include statistical literacy, social media and blogging. See all posts by Rachel Cunliffe »

Nominations

  • avatar
    John Trevithick

    Statistic: The graphics in this article and the general coverage.
    Source: Stuff.co.nz
    Date: Feb 2, 2017

    Credit where credit is due.
    This appears to me to be a very carefully-worded article, that draws back from making sweeping generalizations or misleading claims. Instead, it reports the facts and displays the relevant data in a clear and visually appealing way.

    Only weak point: The chart depicting “Suicide rates vary between genders and age groups” didn’t label the vertical axis. If the idea was to give a visual indication of relative risk between genders, I feel that it did the job well. A minor nit-pick is that the “totals” figures were unclear – I assume they actually showed *average* rates across the age groups.

    It was interesting to compare the tone of this piece to the linked article of October 18 last year, which used the same graphic as above. (http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/85449334/nz-suicide-toll–unacceptably-high)

    7 years ago