August 11, 2014
Stat of the Week Competition: August 9 – 15 2014
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 15 2014.
- Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
- The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of August 9 – 15 2014 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: “Seven of the 10 most common surnames for new births in Auckland last year were of Asian origin.”
Source: NZ Herald – Cherie Howie
Date: Sunday Aug 10, 2014
I think this statistic is an good example of someone overlooking cultural patterns in variation. Although New Zealand has seen a rise in Asian immigration – the fact that certain last names are more common is more a result of the variation of last names between western and Asian cultures, and also how they are used in society.
A quick search suggests that the surname Singh, in the top 10 in Auckland since 1988 according to this article, is a name given to all Sikh’s in order to avoid discrimination between family’s.
Chinese surnames have strikingly less variation than Western last names, Wikipedia (shoot me) tells us that Wang, Li and Zhang cover more than 20% of the entire Chinese population. In contrast the top 3 British last names (Smith, Jones & Taylor) only cover around 2.6% of all British last names. Although we have to consider that immigration to England from Asia is probably higher than the reverse – it is unlikely to cause the 17.4% difference.
Although the article doesn’t really make any claims on this topic other than describing the history of the top names in Auckland (although fails to actually give a list of the top 10), I think it is a good example of how cultural variation can have a big impact on social statistics.
10 years ago
Statistic: The Press is running a series on its website, called How We Live, based on the 2013 census.
http://origin-interactives.stuff.co.nz/how-we-live/#1
http://origin-interactives.stuff.co.nz/how-we-live/#5
http://origin-interactives.stuff.co.nz/how-we-live/#6
In the last one they start the y axis at 10 instead of 0 which is inconsistent with the others and is also pretty misleading.
Source: The Press
Date: 11/08/2014
A good example of a bad axis!
10 years ago
Statistic: Cancer kills more Kiwis than Aussies
Source: New Zealand Herald
Date: 16 Aug 2014
This article is so badly written that I have no idea what it says.
Firstly the headline “Cancer kills more Kiwis than Aussies” can’t be true because there are 5 times as many Aussies as Kiwis so surely cancer must kill more of them.
Secondly “New Zealanders are more likely to die from cancer than Australians” is ambiguous – does it mean that if Kiwis get cancer they are more likely to die from it or does it mean that they are more likely to get it then die.
Thirdly “cancer mortality in New Zealand in 1996-97 was substantially higher than that expected from Australian rates.” What does that mean? Does it mean mortality was higher? Or does it mean higher than expected? But what does expected mean? I have no idea.
“This study compared cancer mortality and incidence” – that’s my first point – mortality and incidence are two different things but the article doesn’t realise that even though it mentions it.
Then the rest of the article is a mishmash of conflicting identically-sounding statements. “Cancer mortality has fallen substantially”, “cancer mortality remains substantially higher”, “there has been little change since 2000”, “differences are slightly smaller”, “the rate in cancer deaths was falling.”
I think a simple table or graphic instead of this mismash of words would have shown what was going on.
The paper itself is behind a paywall. Sucks to that.
10 years ago