December 17, 2012
Stat of the Summer Competition: December 15 2012 – March 1 2013
This summer, we would like to invite readers of Stats Chat to submit nominations for our Stat of the Summer competition and be in with the chance to win a copy of “Beautiful Evidence” by Edward Tufte:
Here’s how it works:
- Anyone may add a comment on this post to nominate their Stat of the Summer candidate before midday Friday March 1 2013.
- Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
- The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of December 15 2012 – March 1 2013 inclusive.
- Quote the statistic, when and where it was published and tell us why it should be our Stat of the Summer.
On Monday 4 March 2013 at midday we’ll announce the winner of the Stat of the Summer competition, and restart the weekly competition.
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.
- 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 copy of “Beautiful Evidence” by Edward Tufte.
- The blog moderator will contact the winner via their notified email address and request their postal address for the book to be sent to.
- The competition will commence Saturday 15 December 2012 and continue until midday Friday 1 March 2013.
The graphic shown here:
http://thehandmirror.blogspot.co.nz/2013/01/this-is-what-rape-culture-looks-like.html
which takes a graphic reprinted on the Washington Post site, and repurposes it for New Zealand.
It attempts to show a couple of things – the number of rape complaints compared to the number of rapes, and the number of rapes compared to the number of false rape complaints.
In contrasting the two offences (rape vs filing a false rape complaint), it has adopted different standards for whether something is one or other of the offences.
A allegation of rape is counted as a rape unless it has been proved not to be one by/to police.
An allegation that there has been a false complaint of rape is only counted as a false complaint of rape if it is proved to be a false complaint by/to police.
If the same standard as applied to allegations of false complaints was applied to allegations of rape, the number of rape depicted would drop from the 496 shown to less than 20.
11 years ago
http://lindsaymitchell.blogspot.co.nz/2013/01/herald-wrong-nzs-youth-unemployment.html
11 years ago
This article (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10862826) appeared in the Herald today about the relationship between marital status and heart attack recovery.
It quotes the percentages as per usual, but also (less usually) includes information about confounding variables which might be responsible for the results e.g. income, patient being found more quickly after the attack etc.
It also includes information about who the results of the study DON’T apply to, which is good to know.
11 years ago
This article (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10862797) was published on the same day as the one above and caught my attention because of the marked difference in the way it was reported.
The dramatic headline “More chores = less sex” is followed up by a story which completely ignores any relevant details which might downplay the significance of the results from this study.
One possible detail, for example, might be that households where chores are allocated in a “traditional” manner are likely to be more conservative or old-fashioned households. This could mean that the women in these homes are still expected to grant their husbands conjugal rights in a way which has been abandoned in more progressive marriages. This seems particularly relevant considering that the study takes place in the US, where there are significant numbers of highly conservative communities, by Western standards at least.
Even the title of the study seems to suggest possible bias. “Egalitarianism, Housework, and Sexual Frequency in Marriage” instantly suggests to me that the emotive issue of sex in marriage is to be linked (unfavourably) with egalitarianism i.e. the concept of treating men and women equally. If this bias does exist, then the worth of this study could be called into question; however, this issue has not been addressed in the article.
I freely admit here that the feminist in me dislikes this article purely because it implicitly discourages men from partaking in the household chores. It is entirely possible that the authors did actually cover all of the details above in the study itself. Unfortunately in this case it seems that a sensational story was considered to be more important than giving an accurate representation of the matter being discussed.
11 years ago
I know this nomination is very self-interested, but I’d like to nominate the latest Household Labour Force figure. Rather interesting that (a) people commented on quarterly changes without context of sample error and (b) commented “the figure has to be wrong as it doesn’t fit what is really happening”. Of course none if this is unusual.
However I exempt Brian Fallows in “The Business” supplement of the Friday 8 February NZH as he did a good explanation as to why different measures can come up with different numbers but be consistent.
11 years ago
Stats here: http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/crime/8151844/Petty-drug-users-fill-New-Zealand-jails
There are quite a few failings with the interpretations of the numbers in this newspaper piece:
Lack of independence: people can be charged multiple times with the same offence code, people can be convicted multiple times of the same offence assuming they are a repeat offender, offenders are not always given the maximum sentence, and, given that the statistics appear to relate to a 6-year period and the custodial sentences are relatively short, the same offender may have been imprisoned more than once.
The headline of the piece suggests that petty drug users represent a majority of the imprisoned population. Clearly, this is not the case. The latest available statistics for the NZ prison population is 8623 as at 30 September 2012 (http://corrections.govt.nz/about-us/facts_and_statistics/prisons/ps-July-2013.html). Dividing each count by 6 (assuming a constant imprisonment rate across the 6 years) and summing to give the worst case scenario (all convicted offenders in a year were imprisoned over the same time frame, each counts is a unique offender), gives a total of just over 419 unique people imprisoned per year. The percentage of the prison population represented by these convicted drug offenders therefore has a ceiling of 8623/419 = 4.9%. Such a low percentage hardly suggests that the jails are filled by these convicted offenders.
Finally, some offenders will have appeared before the courts on multiple offences simultaneously, not all of which will relate to drugs. If they are convicted of multiple offences, they will not usually get an order to serve each sentence cumulatively. So the actual imprisonment period may have nothing to do with the sentence associated with the drug offence.
11 years ago
Grrr, calculation retyping error, should be 419/8623
11 years ago
“Women with more sex partners turn to drink and drugs”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10865549
The title and the first paragraphs make the statements that the more promiscuous you have been in the past, the more likely you are now to be dependent on drugs and alcohol. That being promiscuous causes dependency.
“Women who averaged more than 2.5 sexual partners a year in the years leading up to each interview with the researchers were 10 times as likely as women who had only one or no sexual partners a year to be clinically dependent on alcohol or drugs at age 21. They were seven times as likely by age 26 and 17 times as likely by age 32, even after allowing for all other factors in their lives.”
The increase in likelihood of dependence as the number of years of promiscuity increases is seen as evidence that promiscuity causes alcohol and drug dependence.
However the article then paraphrases the researches by saying “The researchers said the link between the number of partners and later substance dependence might be due to the “shared context” of drinking and meeting people in bars, or to both behaviours being related to underlying risk-taking attitudes.”
While the author of the article claims in the title that researchers have found that promiscuous activities drives people to drink and drugs, all the researchers have found out is that there is a correlation between the two. As we all know Correlation does not imply Causation.
11 years ago