Posts from July 2017 (30)

Team Ratings for Round 17

The basic method is described on my Department home page.

Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 126 matches played, 95 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 75.4%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 17

Here are the predictions for Round 17. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 19

The basic method is described on my Department home page.

Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 130 matches played, 77 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 59.2%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 19

Here are the predictions for Round 19. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

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 July 14 2017.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of July 8 – 14 2017 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.

(more…)

If you’d like to comment on or debate any of this week’s Stat of the Week nominations, please do so below!

Team Ratings for Round 16

The basic method is described on my Department home page.

Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 120 matches played, 93 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 77.5%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 16

Here are the predictions for Round 16. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 18

The basic method is described on my Department home page.

Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 126 matches played, 74 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 58.7%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 18

Here are the predictions for Round 18. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education

Mr. Vijg said repeatedly that his Nature paper made no “definitive statement” about a maximum human age and that he felt “amazement” that anyone might think otherwise. But he acknowledged approving a news release about his study issued by Albert Einstein College with the headline: “Maximum human lifespan has already been reached, Einstein researchers conclude.”

It’s more often the press release than the research paper, but with the consent of the researchers. If press releases were signed by a researcher and made available along with the research paper, there’d be more incentive not to do this sort of thing.

• The Australian has a story about religion in Australia, with the figure of “a touch under 70 per cent nominating a religious affiliation.” That’s only true if you include the 10.6% “Religious affiliation not stated” as nominating a religious affiliation.  The true figure is 56.8%.  You could stretch that to 63.5% of those who answered, but that’s assuming (at least implicitly) that the no-answers are just as likely to be religious as those who stated an affiliation. (via John Quiggin)

• This is why 10 stunning photos will make you cry tears of joy.

• From the Dallas Morning News:Steve Doud, a subscriber from Plano, emailed me to say he’d read something in the June 21 Dallas Morning News that couldn’t possibly be true.An eight-paragraph Washington Post article on page 10A reported on a national study about kids and guns. The last sentence said 4.2 percent of American kids have witnessed a shooting in the past year.

• There’s news in the UK claiming that Ryanair’s “random” seat allocation for people who don’t pay extra to pick a set isn’t random and favours middle seats, including something from Oxford University statisticians. It’s clear that the seats are not a simple random sample of all seats on the plane, but that isn’t what Ryanair is claiming. The airline’s defence, that the people who pay to pick seats usually pick the better ones, seems pretty plausible to me.

• Buzzfeed says the US is going to spend $7.1 billion on food for the Fourth of July weekend. If you think about this as 321 million people for a weekend plus a holiday, it’s not as impressive.  Maybe they’re only counting some types of food?  This violates two of the three basic rules for big dollar numbers: they need to be per-capita, inflation-adjusted, and compared to something. (via Fred Clark)

• “A sloppy attitude towards statistics has led to exaggerated and unjustified claims becoming commonplace in science, according to one of Britain’s most eminent statisticians.” David Spiegelhalter, reported in the Guardian

And finally, a picture of one of the causes of overdiagnosis in cancer — and one of the causes of illusory improvements in survival from earlier screening.

What is overdiagnosis? This refers to the detection of cancers that would never cause harm: https://t.co/tEJ7I54a1z pic.twitter.com/VY8okHOL9q

— National Cancer Inst (@theNCI) June 30, 2017

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 July 7 2017.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of July 1 – 7 2017 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.

(more…)

If you’d like to comment on or debate any of this week’s Stat of the Week nominations, please do so below!