Posts from June 2012 (33)

Thanks to those who nominated in last week’s Stat of the Week competition.

This week we’re awarding Lindsay Mitchell’s nomination of the NZ Herald’s editorial which stated that “The vast majority of child abuse is perpetrated by men.”

There are numerous official sources that disprove this claim. For instance: Fig 7. Number of female and male abusers of specific types of abuse and neglect 2006 (pg 117) and Apprehensions for assault on a child (pg 10)

This isn’t a new bad stat, but keeps cropping up in the media.

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 June 22 2012.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of June 16-22 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.
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If you’d like to comment on or debate any of this week’s Stat of the Week nominations, please do so below!

Team Ratings for Round 15

Here are the team ratings prior to Round 15, along with the ratings at the start of the season. I have created a brief description of the method I use for predicting rugby games. Go to my Department home page to see this.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 103 matches played, 61 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 59.22%.

Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 15

Here are the predictions for Round 15

Thanks for all those who nominated in last week’s Stat of the Week competition.

This week we’re awarding Nick Iversen’s nomination of the NZ Herald’s article “CEO Pay Survey: Salaries stall for NZ’s top bosses” with some nice re-analysis:

The Herald says “the value of the average chief executive pay packet has dropped” and quote the drop in average pay as 0.4%

That’s one way of looking at the data. Here’s another way:

Of the CEOs surveyed 13 had drops in pay and 22 had pay rises. The median pay drop was 7%, the median pay rise was 18.5%.

Of if you prefer mean the mean pay drop was 13.5%, the mean pay rise was 26%.

So most of them had pay rises and the rises were higher than the drops. Looks to me as if the CEOs had a very good year.

One might argue that that this is just an arithmetic blunder, but it does raise (the usual) questions of means and medians.

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

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 June 15 2012.
• Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
• The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of June 9-15 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.
(more…)

May 14, NZ Herald:  Housing boom cuts mortgagee sales.  The number of mortgagee listings has been falling nationally since the recession, and Auckland is leading the charge.

May 31: Stuff: More people losing the family home.  High numbers of ”mum and dad” homeowners are losing family homes to mortgagee sales, new figures show.

June 1: Stuff: Rise in family home mortgagee sales. Family homes are making up an increasing number of the more than 2200 mortgagee sales in New Zealand, new figures show.

June 9: NZ Herald: Mortgagee sales: Landlords feel pain. Mortgagee sales have hit record numbers, and landlords are the new victims.

The housing market doesn’t change that much from week to week.

For some time, the US Embassy in Beijing has been sending out measurements of local air pollution on Twitter.  These have not always been entirely in agreement with the official readings.  Subsequently, the  Guangzhou and Shanghai consulates have done the same thing.

The government of the People’s Republic of China has formally objected.  They claim that readings from just a few locations are too unreliable to report (a problem that doesn’t seem to affect other nations), and “not only doesn’t abide by the spirits of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, but also violates relevant provisions of environmental protection.” 

(via)

And this time it’s Stuff’s turn.  The headline “Liquorice loaded with health benefits” turns out to be an experiment on diabetic mice using not liquorice but specific chemicals extracted from liquorice root.

The story then admits

 “The amount of amorfrutin molecules in a piece of licorice available for human consumption is far too low to cause the same beneficial effects that were identified in the diabetic mice.”

But wait, there’s more!

Glycyrrhizin is the active agent in liquorice that combats illnesses such as upper respiratory infections, and is said to lessen the symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia.

No actual evidence is adduced to support these claims (and we don’t even learn by whom ‘it is said‘), but it doesn’t really matter since

… the amount of real liquorice found in liquorice sweets is not standardised, making it far more safe and effective to take the recommended quantity of liquorice root or extract as a pill or powder.

so that doesn’t work either.

The take home message: the confectionery form of  liquorice  is loaded with sugar and starch, and some people like the taste.