Stat of the Week winner: May 5-11 2012

Thanks for all those who sent in a nomination last week for our Stat of the Week competition. Please enter this week’s competition too!

With such a variety of nominations, it was hard for us to choose a winner but we particularly liked the critique of Conservative Party leader Colin Craig’s use of statistics from a Durex and Marie Clare surveys which was a hot topic of discussion in the country this week as well. (For details, see here and here. As per our rules, the first nominee of a particular statistic is eligible to win.

Savannah Post was the first to nominate this:

Aside from the fact that the statistic was obviously out of date, this is a classic example of quoting a statistic without giving any other information, potentially misleading readers and/or viewers. Quoting the number of men the average New Zealand woman has supposedly slept with in isolation gives no concept of how this statistic compares to similar countries, how the results were collected, which countries were included etc.

A disappointing misuse of statistics to promote the somewhat outdated concept that any woman who uses contraception is automatically promiscuous.

…closely followed by Patricia de Guzman:

Mr Craig has made this wild claim that young NZ women are the most promiscuous in the world when all he’s citing his information from are surveys conducted by a condom manufacturer (obviously people buying condoms will be having more sex; why buy them if you’re not planning on using them?) and Marie Claire (known to have sex info thus women reading this magazine are likely to be having more sex anyway).

Long story short, the sample from those surveys are not a representative of the NZ population of women. We don’t want the world thinking NZ women are promiscuous when there’s no proper evidence!

A big congratulations to Savannah.