May 4, 2015
Stat of the Week Competition: May 2 – 8 2015
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 May 8 2015.
- Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
- The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of May 2 – 8 2015 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.
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 »
Statistic: Auckland house prices rise by almost $1000 per day
Source: TV3 News
Date: 5 May 2015
The real estate gent said they had sold a couple of verry high priced houses that affected the average. Clearly the average is not a good statistic to use in this case, individual houses are not increasing in value at that rate
9 years ago
Statistic: This is not so much a statistic but a vote, that by it’s flawed design, could fail to get the desired result.
This is around the choice of a new flag (but was a similarly flawed for the electoral choices referendum we had recently).
As I understand it – in the first round everyone gets to vote on what flag they would like to change to and then in the second round the top choice is run off against the current flag
Say 40% want to keep the flag and 60% want to change. Suppose further that the of the flag changers – 50% favor flag A, 20% flag B, 20% flag C and 10% flag D.
If the people who don’t want change all vote for flag D – the least favored option (whether they like it or not) than the final tally will be – 30% favour flag A, 12% favour flag B, 12% favour flag C and 46% favour flag D.
And then the last referendum will put the flag that flag changers want least (D) against the current flag and the current flag will presumably win.
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For the “flag non-changers” to work out the preferences of the “flag changers” they can either not respond to any poll or presume that their flag tastes, as regards to the alternatives, are the same as the flag changers.
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At the moment the flag changers have a low percent so it looks like the flag non-changers won’t need to game the system.
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p.s. I also mentioned the same thing here
thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/05/08/winston-flags-referendum-for-protest/
Source: NZ Government
Date: May 5 2015
It’s really a bad statistical process rather than a bad statistic but it could have big consequences.
It’s the same kind of process that was used in the political choices referendum so the process really needs to be changed in case the government think it’s ok to use again.
9 years ago