May 24, 2013

Fact checking is allowed

Stats New Zealand crime statistics:  criminal convictions in Asian, Middle Eastern, Latin American, African ethnicity are 4.4% of all convictions in the country as a whole, 13.7% in Auckland

Population: for NZ as a whole, 10% Asian in 2006 (projected to rise to 13% in 2016).  For Auckland, 24% in 2006.

So, people of Asian ethnicity are substantially less likely to be convicted of crimes (and, presumably, to commit crimes) than the population as a whole.  Would this be so hard to check when reporting? It can’t be much harder than getting responses from political leaders, which the Fairfax papers managed.

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Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »