Stat of the Week Winner: October 1-7 2011

Thanks for all the nominations this week, especially all those from Tony Cooper! The winning nomination is: “Drowning deaths soar beyond 2010 total” – there are many such stories in the media where the usual type of variability one would expect to see with counts of events is seen as something unusual:

This is similar to my previous nomination in that it is making headlines out of statistical noise.

90 people have now drowned in New Zealand in 2011 and the drowning drowning toll is predicted to rise to 110 or more by the end of the year.

But an examination of the drowning deaths chart at http://www.watersafety.org.nz/research/ shows that 110 is pretty normal and that 2010 was an exceptional year in being below 100.

Looks like we have a new statistical term “soaring to the mean” to replace “reversion to the mean.”