December 2, 2013
Stat of the Week Competition: November 30 – December 6 2013
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 December 6 2013.
- Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
- The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of November 30 – December 6 2013 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: The gap between the rich and the poor appears to be widening with the number of Kiwis earning more than $100,000 increasing by nearly three quarters.
Source: New Zealand Herald
Date: 4 Dec 2013
The Herald and Bernard Hickey both claim that the gap between rich and poor is widening. But there is no evidence presented in that article to back up the claim.
I suspect that they are using faulty logic.
The fact that “number of Kiwis earning more than $100,000 is increasing” says nothing about the gap. All that the statistics say is that there are more people at the top end and people at the lower end are getting more too (median income has increased from $24,400 to $28,500).
But there is no information on the web page that measures the difference between rich and poor in absolute or proportional terms. So no statement can be made about the gap.
Statistics on the page show that everyone is earning more – except for one contradiction. The number of people on zero income has increased from 145050 to 242505. This would be a big drag on the median income. So when the Herald says that the median “has not kept pace with the inflation rate” I am a bit dubious. I’d like to know who these zero earners are (students?) and why they have increased before I make a statement about changes in the median income (the Herald doesn’t say but the figures are for adults >= 15).
In the print version of the article Eileen Brown of the CTU is quoted as saying the “dramatic increase in the number of people earning over $100,000 showed that the rich were getting richer.” That’s inflation. We already knew that. I see why the Herald omitted that from the online version.
10 years ago
Statistic: A Meadowbank couple made $1.4 million in five years, buying a house for $587,000 and getting $2 million for it.
Source: nzherald.co.nz
Date: 6 Dec 2013
The gist of the article, and the headline on the homepage (“How to make $1.4m in five years”), is that the $1.4m is pure profit.
Reading further on, though, you read that the owner was a contractor who, “…didn’t say how much the extensive renovations cost but said he added 190sqm of floorspace”. And a pool. Renovations of this quality cost about $5000/sqm and landscapes with pools probably cost over $100k. Add it all up while taking inflation and the cost of borrowing into account and you’ll see that the actual profit from this property deal was probably closer to $140,000 than $1,400,000.
10 years ago