May 21, 2012
Stat of the Week Competition: May 19-25 2012
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 May 25 2012.
- Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
- The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of May 18-25 2012 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.
Statistic: Two of the most in-demand suburbs in Auckland last month were Glenfield, with 106 properties taking an average of 29 days to sell at an average price of $441,500, and Henderson, with 162 properties taking an average of 34 days to sell at an average price of $380,451.
Source: NZ Herald
Date: 21.05.2012
The article was talking about the cyclic nature of suburb popularity and how prices affect a person’s desire and ability to live in an area. I like this statistic because it is easily understandable the quantitative variables can easily be identified (price, number of properties and average number of days taken to sell) and the qualitative categories can also be recognised – suburb – Glenfield or Henderson. It should be stat of the week because it’s also a cheerful statistic – houses are selling well in those areas and many first time buyers are able to dabble in the market.
13 years ago
Statistic: A record 53,500 Kiwis crossed the ditch to Australia permanently in the year to April 30, according to the latest figures from Statistics New Zealand.
Just 13,700 migrants, mostly returning New Zealanders, arrived permanently from Australia.
The seasonally adjusted net 39,800 loss to Australia for the year was also the highest on
record.
The annual population loss to Australia has been at record levels since the November 2011 year Statistics New Zealand says.
There were net gains of migrants from most other countries, led by 5500 from Britain, 5100 from China and 2100 from the Philippines.
Economists expected the weak New Zealand job market would see more people leave the country for all parts of the country than would arrive during the first half of this year.
But that trend should reverse once the rebuild of Christchurch get underway and jobs in Australia continued to become tougher to come by.
The Easter holiday and Australian school holidays falling earlier in April was also being blamed for a 1 per cent reduction in overall tourist numbers for the month of April compared to the same month last year.
Statistics New Zealand spokeswoman Susan Hollows said while Easter started on April 2, compared to April 22 last year, more people generally travelled in the lead up to holiday periods.
Tourists from Australia were down 6,800 due to the earlier holidays.
”Combining the number of visitors in March and April, there were 22,300 more visitors in 2012 than in 2011,” Hollows said.
The overall increase was partly due to the February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, which contributed to a decrease in visitor numbers last year.
Total visitors from China were up 7,900 in April 2012 compared with April 2011.
The number Chinese tourists more than doubled, from 6,700 to 14,000.
Tourists from Britain were down 5,900.
In the April 2012 year, 2.616 million visitors arrived in New Zealand, up 4 per cent from 2011.
The largest increases were in visitors from Australia, China, and Malaysia. The largest decrease was in visitors from Japan.
New Zealanders took 183,200 overseas trips in April 2012, about the same number as last year.
This was despite earlier Easter and school holidays, which contributed to a 7 per cent increase in overseas trips during March 2012, compared with March 2011.
In the April 2012 year, New Zealanders took 2.1m overseas trips, up 3 per cent from 2011.
Source: Stuff.co.nz
Date: 21/05/2012
This has to be one of the better looks at the migration levels to and from NZ. Looking at both the numbers to AND from Australia. Although I am not to sure what a seasonally adjusted net loss for a year is…
They also included the net migration from other countries letting us compare the Australian figures relative to other countries. It would have been nice to have the emmigration and immigration from those countries as well but the net is better than nothing.
13 years ago
Statistic: Finance Minister Bill English’s push for an early return to surplus in today’s Budget has overwhelming support, with a survey showing 60 per cent rate it as the top priority.
Source: Stuff website
Date: 24/05/2012
This is another example of a dubious survey result. Later in the article it is revealed that “In a survey of more than 2000 Fairfax readers only 29 per cent disagreed that returning the books to surplus should be the Government’s top priority”. I’m assuming that it was an online poll, but information about the survey method is not provided.
In addition, the question appears to have only offered one option (returniong the books to surplus) as a top priority, with people responding “yes”, “no”, or “don’t know”. A multi-choice or unprompted question would have provided more convincing evidence about what people thouight the Government’s top priority should be. You can make a stronger argument if people freely respond that they think returning the books to surplus is the top priority rather than being primed by only one possible option.
13 years ago
Statistic: AA misreads its members views
Source: New Zealand Herald
Date: 25 May 2012
The headline is unintentionally correct in more ways than Rudman specifies.
The AA survey of 6030 members that he refers to is an online survey: http://www.aa.co.nz/about/newsroom/media-releases/infrastructure/aa-releases-survey-results-on-auckland-transport-issues/
So (as pointed out many times on this web site) it not even representative of AA members due to self selection bias.
AA claim it has a margin of error of 1.3% which is misleading because in this survey the sampling bias far exceeds the sampling error.
13 years ago
Statistic: The forecast fiscal surplus in 2014/15 is $197 million.
Source: Budget 2012
Date: 24 May 2012
The forecast surplus for three years hence is overly precise at $197 million. Given that forecasts can easily be out by billions of dollars (http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10807922) this number should be rounded to the nearest billion, not million.
So the correct forecast for 2014/15 should be stated as zero, not $197 million.
13 years ago