Thanks to Cam for his nomination of child abuse statistics – there’s some discussion in response. Due to a lack of other nominations, we are not awarding a winner this week. Please add your nominations again to this week’s competition!
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:
Next Monday at midday we’ll announce the winner of this week’s Stat of the Week competition, and start a new one.
If you’d like to comment on or debate any of this week’s Stat of the Week nominations, please do so below!
If you’d like to comment on or debate any of this week’s Stat of the Week nominations, please do so below!
Cam Slater nominates Stuff’s article “Perceptions clash with facts over abuse”:
“Her masters thesis at Massey University found about half of the children killed in New Zealand died at the hands of a Pakeha abuser.”
“Maori make up 14.6% of the population but kill and abuse their kids at the same rates and everyone else. The split is about 50/50. Her research clearly shows that child abuse most certainly is a cultural issue with Maori hugely more likely than everyone else to kill or abuse their children.”
I comment at: http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2012/03/yes-it-is-a-cultural-issue/
David Farrar also comments on this: http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2012/03/child_abuse_stats.html
The thesis says that the ethnicity of those convicted of assaulting children are Maori 48%, European 28%, PI 19%. To get a prevalence figure, I will use the population figures for under 14s. This is 21% Maori, 58% European, 11% PI and 9% Asian.
This works out to a prevalence rate for Maori that is 4.8 times that of Europeans. It is also 3.4 times that of Pacific Islanders. Or to compare all three, the comparative rates are Maori 4.8, PI 1.4, European 1.0.
This week’s winner was tough to decide – there were a fantastic selection of nominations. Thank you to all who entered!
The winner is Eric Crampton’s nomination of the Dominion Post’s burglary statistics:
“Wellingtonians were far less likely to be burgled than their Auckland counterparts, with 31 per cent of all burglaries taking place in the Auckland region, compared with just under 9 per cent in Wellington.”
Eric points to Bill Kaye-Blake’s thorough critique here.
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:
Next Monday at midday we’ll announce the winner of this week’s Stat of the Week competition, and start a new one.
Thanks for all the nominations on our Stat of the Week competition, there’s still a couple of hours to add yours in before this week’s competition closes.
Nominations to date which qualify are:
Sammy Jia points out that the options are only “The sacked workers” and “Ports of Auckland”. There is no option for saying “Neither side” or “Don’t know”.
Ksenia Kovaleva rants:
“This is an example of very limited numbers/ statistics being used by the media to suggest something I find misogynistic. The actual survey and numbers are very shaky evidence to draw any conclusions, especially about Kiwi women. This stat is affected by selection bias, self-reporting bias and possibly even a social desirability bias element in that are men likely to admit to feeling insecure when not that long ago a man’s ‘role’ was thought to be to provide financial stability?)
I find this stat an example of irresponsible journalism to take what I would deem an unreliable and limited statistical result, rip it apart from any current sociological context, and pair it with a quote as if those numbers support that one person’s view when they don’t.
A badly designed survey is being published in a national newspaper pared with a quote perpetuating stereotypes and the sad thing is unless you have actually studied statistics, I think most people will simply take it at face value.” Read the full nomination »
Jordan Yates critiques an article in the NZ Herald on the attractiveness of beards.
Manakaetau ‘Otai says statistics in a NZ Herald article:
“may mislead and confuse NZ Herald readers, but overall the story is a positive use of statistics but there is no real reputable source for the statistics to back up their claims”
Let us know what you think of the nominations!
Thank you for all the fantastic Stat of the Summer nominations.
Two of them generated popular posts on Stats Chat:
The winner was chosen to be Eric Crampton’s nomination of smoker costs from The Quit Group, quoted on Radio NZ for smokers each costing the economy $139,000/year.
If it were true, the sky would fall in.
While the original source provided a form of correction to Eric for the smoking number, as far as we know Radio NZ didn’t correct the report.
Congratulations Eric for winning a copy of Tufte’s book “Beautiful Evidence”.
Thank you to everyone who took part and we are now resuming our weekly competition, so please keep your 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:
Next Monday at midday we’ll announce the winner of this week’s Stat of the Week competition, and start a new one.
There’s still a little more time to add your nominations for the Stat of the Summer competition, and here’s the most recent two nominations from Tony Cooper:
“it was flawed because they assumed as truth something that is only a hypothesis and assumed that correlation implies causation (that inequality causes poverty”
“The thing that struck me as odd, almost humorous, about this story which reports that West Coast/Buller is the happiest region in NZ is that in 2008 the survey reported the same region as the LEAST happiest. Surely the region hasn’t changed that much in that little time!
My best guess is that this is an example of getting the sampling error wrong.”