July 30, 2012
Stat of the Week Competition: July 28 – August 3 2012
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 August 3 2012.
- Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
- The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of July 28 – August 3 2012 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.
- 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: If you plan to celebrate 25 years of Lotto with a ticket for tonight’s Big Wednesday draw, some outlets offer better odds than others.
Source: stuff.co.nz
Date: 1/8/12
Obviously the odds don’t change, it’s just statistical variation. Either that or NZ Lotteries is doing something funky with the way they choose their winning tickets!
12 years ago
Statistic: Olympics: Chinese swimmer’s time ‘flat out impossible’
Source: NZ Herald
Date: 31 July
Ye Shiwen won the women’s 400m individual medley in a new world record time, largely due to a very fast last 100m freestyle leg of 58.68s. The headline repeats what some have said about her swim.
There seems to be 4 arguments. 1. Her personal best has improved dramatically in a short time. 2. No women has ever swum a freestyle leg as fast as that in a 400m medley race before. 3. The last 50m split was faster than the men’s 400 medley winner. 4. The freestyle leg was faster than most specialist freestylers can do over similar distances.
The first argument seems weak as other swimmers about her age improved by similar amounts at this meeting, and Stephanie Rice improved by about the same amount before winning the gold medal in Beijing in this event.
The second seems true judging by the reaction of experienced commentators. In Beijing, Stephanie Rice swam 62.2s on the freestyle leg in her world record time.
The third argument is a bit misleading. While true, she wasn’t faster than him over the whole 100m leg, and he didn’t swim the fastest leg. What’s true is that her time would have been very respectable for any of the male medley swimmers in the final who swam 57-59s, and much faster than all her other competitors who swam 61-64s.
Lastly, in the women’s world record times for the 200m, 400m, and 800m freestyle, the last 100m splits were 58.9s, 60.88s, and 60.86s respectively. So her last leg was faster than all these world record freestyle specialists, and they had the extra advantage of doing tumble turns whereas she did 1 breaststroke-freestyle turn which is probably 1-2s slower.
The freestyle time does seem an outlier. I wonder if there is a role for detailed statistical analyses to investigate and detect outlying results?
12 years ago
Statistic: The latest 3 News Reid Research poll sees National given a huge boost
Source: 3 News
Date: 5 August 2012
A poll with a largish negative sampling error for National is followed by a poll with a largish positive sampling error.
As is the norm with these things, Duncan Garner pretends that isolated polls have sufficient power to detect changes of this size, and comes up with a just-so story to explain the random fluctuations.
12 years ago