Posts filed under Stat of the Week (619)

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

While Ruatara Paapu’s entry was the only nomination last week in our Stat of the Week competition, it is still a worthy winner.

Auckland Councillor Cameron Brown put out a press release entitled: “68% percent [sic] of Aucklanders wanted berm mowing continued”.

However, this statistic is rather misleading – it’s 68% of those who made a submission on berm mowing, not 68% of Aucklanders.

Congratulations Rutara and keep those nominations coming in!

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 October 18 2013.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of October 12 – 18 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.

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

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 October 11 2013.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of October 5 – 11 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.

(more…)

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

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 October 4 2013.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of September 28 – October 4 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.

(more…)

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

Thank you for your nominations in this week’s Stat of the Week Competition.

Two of the nominations were about arithmetic – percentage increase and closing speed calculations – and two were more interesting examples about coffee and beer drinking. Thomas had posted earlier about the coffee drinking example (although Dave Tattersfield added some more useful information to his nomination).

So, this week we’ve chosen Nick Iversen’s curious sample-size-of-one beer-drinking nomination to be our Stat of the Week:

Under limit after 13 beers in 2 hours

This statistic doesn’t ring true and defies common sense.

The article says that a police officer who drank 13 beers in two hours remained under the legal drink-driving limit of 80. That’s incredible and I don’t believe it.

If we consult the tables at http://www.moderation.org/bac/bac-men.shtml we see that if a heavy 109kg man drinks 12 beers then after 2 hours his BAC would be 148 or roughly twice the limit.

The story can only be true if the police officer is much heavier than 109kg (say twice that) or if the beer is low alcohol and in either case the story is dishonestly misleading.

There appears to be a photograph of the policer office in question back in 2010 here (second from the left).

Congratulations Nick and thanks for all the nominations!

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 September 27 2013.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of September 21 – 27 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.

(more…)