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!

Congratulations to Steve Black for his highly topical nomination for Stat of the Week:

Statistic: A bogus txt in poll on Campbell Life shows 22% support for the same sex marriage bill, 78% opposed.
Source: TV3 Campbell Live
Date: 17 April 2013

A bogus txt in poll on Campbell Life shows 22% support for the same sex marriage bill, 78% opposed. Nice illustration of just how far off bogus polls can be from general population results done by proper sampling techniques. Ironically, it came on the same day as the legislation passed 77 to 44. I can’t find a trace of it left on the TV3 web page, but I’m still collecting references. Note that the conservative blog I referenced considers it “The best indication yet, short of a referendum, of what the public actually think about same-sex marriage.” thus compounding the mistake of bogus polls taken as meaningful.

This bogus poll would be a perfect example for our first year introductory statistics course on non-sampling errors causing biased results.

Special mention also to Nick’s nomination of Statistics New Zealand’s latest New Zealand Period Life Tables.

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 April 26 2013.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of April 20 – 26 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 April 19 2013.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of April 13 – 19 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!

Congratulations to Nick Iversen for his humorous nomination of “Sex basically doubles your life span” winning this week’s Stat of the Week competition:

“The anti-ageing benefits [of frequent sexual activity] are amazing. It basically doubles your life span once you get to your 60s and 70s.”

The article obviously get correlation confused with causation but that’s not why I’m posting it here.

The reason for the post is that the statement about life span is so obviously blatantly wrong that I don’t see how any intelligent person could make it.

The average life span of people in their 60s and 70s is (funnily enough) at least 60 or 70. Doubling this means that sex extends your lifespan to 120 or 140.

OK so she really means “remaining lifespan.” For those in their 60s remaining lifespan is about 20 to 25 years. So frequent sex doubles that to 40 to 50 years.

Just doesn’t sound at all reasonable to me. If sex makes that much difference to life expectancy it far outweighs any contributions due to diet, exercise etc and would have been noticed centuries ago.

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 April 12 2013.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of April 6 – 12 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 April 5 2013.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of March 30 – April 5 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…)