Posts filed under Stat of the Week (619)

Thanks for all the nominations for last week’s Stat of the Week competition.

We’ve awarded Cam Slater’s nomination as the winner, with runner up going to John Kerr’s nomination.

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 November 11 2011.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of November 5-11 2011 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.

The fine print:

• Judging will be conducted by the blog moderator in liaison with staff at the Department of Statistics, The University of Auckland.
• The judges’ decision will be final.
• The judges can decide not to award a prize if they do not believe a suitable statistic has been posted in the preceeding week.
• Only the first nomination of any individual example of a statistic used in the NZ media will qualify for the competition.
• Employees (other than student employees) of the Statistics department at the University of Auckland are not eligible to win.
• The person posting the winning entry will receive a $20 iTunes voucher.
• The blog moderator will contact the winner via their notified email address and advise the details of the $20 iTunes voucher to that same email address.
• The competition will commence Monday 8 August 2011 and continue until cancellation is notified on the blog.

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

Thanks to Adina for the nomination but due to a lack of other entries, there is no winner for this week.

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 November 4 2011.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of October 29-November 4 2011 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.

The fine print:

• Judging will be conducted by the blog moderator in liaison with staff at the Department of Statistics, The University of Auckland.
• The judges’ decision will be final.
• The judges can decide not to award a prize if they do not believe a suitable statistic has been posted in the preceeding week.
• Only the first nomination of any individual example of a statistic used in the NZ media will qualify for the competition.
• Employees (other than student employees) of the Statistics department at the University of Auckland are not eligible to win.
• The person posting the winning entry will receive a $20 iTunes voucher.
• The blog moderator will contact the winner via their notified email address and advise the details of the $20 iTunes voucher to that same email address.
• The competition will commence Monday 8 August 2011 and continue until cancellation is notified on the blog.

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

Thanks to Rob for his nomination of a misleading graph but due to a lack of other entries (perhaps we were all a little distracted by other events this week), there is no winner for this week.

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 28 2011.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of October 22-28 2011 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.

The fine print:

• Judging will be conducted by the blog moderator in liaison with staff at the Department of Statistics, The University of Auckland.
• The judges’ decision will be final.
• The judges can decide not to award a prize if they do not believe a suitable statistic has been posted in the preceeding week.
• Only the first nomination of any individual example of a statistic used in the NZ media will qualify for the competition.
• Employees (other than student employees) of the Statistics department at the University of Auckland are not eligible to win.
• The person posting the winning entry will receive a $20 iTunes voucher.
• The blog moderator will contact the winner via their notified email address and advise the details of the $20 iTunes voucher to that same email address.
• The competition will commence Monday 8 August 2011 and continue until cancellation is notified on the blog.

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

Thanks for all the nominations this week. We’ve selected Eric Crampton’s nomination of a “mutant statistic” to be this week’s winner:

Here’s TVNZ’s quote: “Australia’s Cancer Council said the Senate should end the political delays and get on with passing the legislation, with authorities estimating smoking now kills 15,000 Australians each year and costs the health system $32 billion.”

The $32 billion figure comes from Collins & Lapsley’s report on the social costs of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs.

Most importantly, $32 billion figure counts a host of tangible and intangible costs that fall on the smoker, those around the smoker, and the public health system. Only $312 million of the $32 billion, according to the report, counts as a net health cost. Just look at the first table at xii in the Executive Summary.

I get really really annoyed at how these big numbers, which mostly consist of costs borne by the smoker or drinker himself, get twisted by activists like the Cancer Council to build support for policies that further beat on smokers and drinkers. There can be a case for anti-smoking policy. But it oughtn’t be based on lies. Smokers pay more in tax than they cost the health system in any country that has a reasonably large tobacco tax and a reasonably large public pension system.

This is a classic example of using the wrong definition for a figure (we noted the table said $318.4 million rather than $318 million) – a common problem with statistics – and $32 billion is rather different from $318 million!