November 12, 2012
Stat of the Week Competition: November 10 – 16 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 November 16 2012.
- Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
- The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of November 10 – 16 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.
- Individual posts on Stats Chat are just the opinions of their authors, who can criticise anyone who they feel deserves it, but the Stat of the Week award involves the Department of Statistics more officially. For that reason, we will not award Stat of the Week for a statistic coming from anyone at the University of Auckland outside the Statistics department. You can still nominate and discuss them, but the nomination won’t be eligible for the prize.
- 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.
Rachel Cunliffe is the co-director of CensusAtSchool and currently consults for the Department of Statistics. Her interests include statistical literacy, social media and blogging. See all posts by Rachel Cunliffe »
Statistic: The graph shows the decline in Facebook ‘likes’ that Mitt experienced over a two hour period in late on election day.
Source: Stuff
Date: 13 November 2012
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who noticed this. Stuff reported “Mitt Romney’s fall from social-media grace” with a grossly misrepresenting graph.
A glance at the graph seems to imply that Mitt suffered a dramatic drop in his number of ‘likes’. The accompanying commentary also made this interpretation. A detailed look reveals an entirely different picture.
Romney’s number of likes in fact dropped by a very modest 0.1% over the two hour period when it became apparent that he was not going to be president.
Perhaps the story should have reported the resoluteness of his supporters in the face of defeat.
12 years ago
Statistic: The gender pay gap has increased from 12.85 percent to 14.18 percent in the year to September, meaning that males workers are far out earning female workers and that this is getting worse not better.
Source: Scoop
Date: 13 November 2012
Females are performing better than males in our schools and universities. And with everything being said about equality and how women are being given all the chances that men are, this stat proves this to be false.
Men are earning more and this disparity is increasing not decreasing, this means that our passive way of waiting for this to right itself is not happening and more active involvment is needed to fix this issue.
This also shows the change that our culture still needs to make, that we are not yet where we need to be. This is a stat that is quickly looked over but is an important one about an issue that is easily ignored by most.
12 years ago
Statistic: Gender pay gap
Source: As above
Date: As above
Seconding the nomination above, but for the opposite reason. It’s nonsensical to compare the average pay of men and women unless you correct for that:
1) women are MASSIVELY more likely to be employed part time: 12% of working men work part time; 35% of working women work part time. Part time work pays less than full time and often is chosen to allow balancing of other family commitments.
2) time out of the workforce kills wage growth for a while, and women often take employment gaps with family.
Some of these issues covered here:
http://offsettingbehaviour.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/more-pay-gaps.html
Oh, and the NZ Income Survey from June gives the opposite result.
12 years ago