August 19, 2017

Sampling bias

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Via GeoNet, a magnitude 4.5 quake south of Dannevirke (blue box)

quake

The squares are reports of shaking. The big cluster is Palmerston North, with secondary clusters in Feilding and Ashhurst: there are more people who felt the quake there because there are more people there.  See also XKCD

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »

Comments

  • avatar
    Duncan Hedderley

    I suspect there’s also a distribution of sensitivity to earthquakes, so you’re more likely to get *some* ‘Severe’ ratings in a population centre

    7 years ago