Posts filed under General (3156)

Team Ratings for Round 1

The basic method is described on my Department home page. I have made some changes to the methodology this year, including shrinking the ratings between seasons.

Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season. Note that new teams are given a rating of -10. This is somewhat arbitrary, but has proved reasonably satisfactory in predicting Super Rugby games.

Predictions for Round 1

Here are the predictions for Round 1. 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.

• Nicely balanced Guardian article on genetic sequencing in rare diseases

Some diagnoses open up a whole world of support groups and treatments for patients who previously had no name to put to their disorder. But even when there is no treatment, no sudden rush of hope and relief, families are grateful for the diagnosis.

• Andrew Gelman:
  

  The result is what I call the “scientific surprise” two-step: (1) When defending the plausibility of your results, you emphasize that they are just as expected from a well-estabilished scientific theory with a rich literature; (2) When publicizing your results… you emphasize the novelty and surprise value.

• From the copyediting blog “Ten Minutes Past Deadline”, an example of how statistical errors avoid getting into print (on a good day, God willing and the creek don’t rise)

• Network visualisation game to show how a disease spreads (via Flowing Data).

“…Unlike people, computer programs aren’t embarrassed by their prejudices and don’t try to hide them.” Thomas Lumley discusses the algorithm-based tools that sift data about us and our behaviour in this week’s New Zealand Listener. Click here for the full story.

• Five data visualisation tools focused on design: once you can do ‘accurate’, the next step is ‘ooh, shiny’
• Why do people suddenly think their iPhones are slow? A piece at the NY Times ‘Upshot’ blog using Google search data
• Cathy O’Neill writes about two stories about standardized tests
• [update: I forgot to add] Unsurprising conclusions drawn from unreliable data: According to Stuff a bogus poll says people under 35 are more likely to use smartphones when looking for a job than people over 50.

The American Statistical Association is launching a public relations campaign to make people think statistics is less boring and pointless, which is good:

We want students and parents to have a better understanding of a field that is often unknown or misunderstood. Statistics is not just a collection of numbers or formulas. It’s not just lines, bars or points on a graph. It’s not just computing. Statistics is so much more. It’s an exciting—even fun—way of looking at the world and gaining insights through a scientific approach that rewards creative thinking.

That’s a quote from the  shiny new website, ThisIsStatistics. It has stories about what statisticians do, and information about salary and job trends and stuff.  There are videos of statisticians talking about their work: currently Roger Peng (Johns Hopkins, SimplyStatistics blog) and Genevra Allen (Rice University).

It’s slightly disappointing that more of the people on the site arent’ real, just stock photos, but I suppose that’s unavoidable. What’s a bit more annoying is one of the photos in particular:

This looks as if it was constructed specially (the cup/mat/tablet/glasses are stock, eg).  It’s a rose chart, which is an ok way to display circular data (eg wind directions), but is not so good for comparison because of the way the wedges change shape as they get larger. The numeric labels are also a slightly strange choice for a circle measured in degrees (90 isn’t a multiple of 20).

Much more importantly, given the emphasis of the site on statistics as solving real problems, this is labelled as not being real: “data A” and “data B”.  Not helpful when we’re trying to tell people “It’s not just lines, bars or points on a graph”.

Team Ratings for Round 21

The basic method is described on my Department home page. I have made some changes to the methodology this year, including shrinking the ratings between seasons.

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 144 matches played, 79 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 54.9%.

Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 21

Here are the predictions for Round 21. 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 the Super Rugby Final

The basic method is described on my Department home page. I have made some changes to the methodology this year, including shrinking the ratings between seasons.

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 124 matches played, 82 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 66.1%.

Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for the Super Rugby Final

Here are the predictions for the Super Rugby Final. 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.

Your periodic reminder that we do know the masthead quotation is a paraphrase, but that I think it is an accurate one. 

Statistics New Zealand is running the numbers during the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games to show how many medals countries are winning relative to their population.  At the time of posting, we were third on a per-million-of-population basis. Check it out here.

The New Zealand Data Futures Forum, which was established by the Ministers of Finance and Statistics to explore the future of data-sharing between the public and private sector, has released a discussion paper here.

This is the press release that was issued this morning:

Paddock to plate, and smart roads possible – NZ Data Futures Forum

New Zealand’s international brand and exports could grow significantly with the creation of a data sharing ‘eco-system’ according to a paper released by the NZ Data Futures Forum today.

Food traceability or ‘paddock to plate’ tracking is one of a number of kick start projects recommended in the paper that would see New Zealand become a world leader in the trusted use of data.

“New Zealand has got a real opportunity here. If we can create an ‘eco-system’ for data, we can unlock huge value, but to do this we need to treat data as a national asset,” says Forum Chair John Whitehead.

The paper suggests a range of initiatives including the establishment of an independent data council and an open data champion to drive innovation through data sharing.  The data council would act as an independent ‘guardian’ to ensure trust, privacy and security are maintained.

“Getting the rules of the game right is a vital part of encouraging collaboration, creativity and innovation.  New Zealand is uniquely placed to do this extremely well.”

The development of ‘smart roads’ that pull data from a range of sources, such as cats eye data capturing traffic flow, is another example the Forum uses to highlight the value that can  be created through collaborative data sharing.

“Transport is a critical issue for Auckland. Smart roads can keep traffic moving more freely and prevent a future of bottlenecks and delays literally putting a brake on productivity

“If our recommendations are followed we will see New Zealand lead the world in this space. The potential gains are limitless, including the ability to tackle immediate and real social problems.”