The myth of feckless youth which does not understand the value of money should be laid to rest, new research from online deposit bank RaboDirect suggests.
The overwhelming majority of young Kiwis do not believe in long-term financial planning and most give no thought to budgeting.
Stuff’s headline “Heart drug warning from Kiwi doctor” should perhaps have been “Heart drug reassurance from Kiwi doctor”. It’s not a bad story, but some additional background might be helpful. Or interesting. Or something.
Beta-blockers block part of the body’s response to adrenaline, and are used for several quite different reasons. They were one of the early treatments for high blood pressure, they are given after heart attacks, they are used to treat congestive heart failure (where the heart doesn’t pump effectively), and they are also used occasionally for their ability to block some of the physical symptoms of anxiety (and so are banned as performance-enhancing in some sports). The ‘Kiwi doctor’, cardiologist Chris Nunn, is concerned that a study looking at beta-blocker use mostly for preventing serious heart disease might be misinterpreted by patients taking beta-blockers to treat serious heart disease.
The research study, published in the leading medical journal JAMA, was motivated by concern over the use of beta-blockers after heart attack being generalised to people who had not had a heart attack. The abstract begins
β-Blockers remain the standard of care after a myocardial infarction (MI). However, the benefit of β-blocker use in patients with coronary artery disease (CAD) but no history of MI, those with a remote history of MI, and those with only risk factors for CAD is unclear.
The study is observational. That is, in contrast to the randomised experiments done with people who have had heart attacks or heart failure, this study didn’t assign people to beta-blockers. The researchers just looked at who was and wasn’t taking the drugs, trying to get a fair comparison by matching users and non-users using a technique called propensity scores. The idea behing propensity scores is that you will only get a bias from some other variable if it affects the chance of taking beta-blockers, so you can summarise all the available variables by a single score measuring their influence on the probability of taking beta-blockers. This technique only works if you measure all the relevant variables (which you don’t) and you get exactly the right model for producing the propensity score (which, again, you don’t), so it’s less reliable than random assignments of treatment. Even so, the study results in people who have had a heart attack were pretty consistent with the benefits seen after heart attack in randomised studies.
The results in people who had not had a heart attack are also consistent with randomised trials. Since everyone in the study was seeing a doctor at least at enrollment, most of them were taking high blood pressure medication, and often of more than one kind. One explanation of the lack of benefit from beta-blockers is just that they are less effective on average than some other high blood pressure medications in preventing heart disease and stroke. That is what was found in a combined analysis of randomised trials by a group including me, about ten years ago, and in some other similar analyses.
So. Beta-blockers after heart attack or in heart failure are good. Beta-blockers in people with high blood pressure but not heart disease might be less effective than alternatives, but New Zealand guidelines (eg) already take all this into account, so the new study shouldn’t cause any changes in practice here.
Thanks for the nominations last week for our Stat of the Week competition! This week we’ve chosen the winner to be Scott Donaldson for his nomination:
“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.
The story originated at the social media website Mashable and at DisappearingRomney.com. LikeLoss.com tracks the percentage of likes lost since election result. It’s currently at a mere 1.23%.
The US states are often referred to as ‘laboratories of democracy’, suggesting that a typical American view of labs may be like this or this.
Back before the US election I posted a picture of the creatively-drawn electoral districts in Pennsylvania. Redistricting is very effective: the Republicans got less than 50% of the total vote for Pennsylvania’s Representatives, but 70% of the seats. The Democrats do the same things — they got 80% of Maryland’s seats with about 60% of the vote — but the Republicans controlled more states in the critical census year, and so managed to get a majority in the House of Representatives with a minority of the vote.
Here are graphs, from Mother Jones magazine. Remember that the moderate right-wing party in the US uses the same colour, blue, as here in NZ, and the red is for Republicans.
A Herald story today tells us, four times, “22 per cent of women feel they have stronger relationship with girlfriends than their partners.” According to a 2009 survey (PDF), 18% of adult Kiwis were not married, living together, or even dating. That could potentially explain a lot of the 22%.
At least that one was for a charitable cause. The other survey story was for an online dating service that relies on recommendations from (Facebook) friends. Unsurprisingly, the survey they commissioned could be read as supporting this strategy:
43 per cent of people trusted their friends and families when it comes to dating advice, tips and recommendations.
and
The survey found singles were less inclined to go to a professional matchmaker for help, with only 1 per cent saying they would trust them
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:
Next Monday at midday we’ll announce the winner of this week’s Stat of the Week competition, and start a new one.
If you’d like to comment on or debate any of this week’s Stat of the Week nominations, please do so below!
Some surveys are done to find out information. Others, perhaps not so much.
Today’s example is from the Herald, where the most informative sentence in the story is at the end:
The survey of 500 men and women in New Zealand and 1000 in Australia was commissioned by Bendon in conjunction with the release of a range of cleavage-enhancing bras.
Alan Dove nails it
In a groundbreaking new study, scientists at Some University have discovered that a single molecule may drive people to perform that complex behavior we’ve all observed. Though other researchers consider the results of the small, poorly structured experiment misleading, a well-written press release ensures that their criticisms will be restricted to brief quotes buried near the bottoms of most news stories on the work, if they’re included at all…
…“Ten years from now, if you ask someone whose science education consists mainly of skimming news stories, I’m sure they’ll confirm that this single molecule causes this complex behavior,”
(via)
A new website WTFlevel.com (SFW, but makes siren noises) does real-time monitoring of the intensity of swearing on Twitter (only in English, unfortunately).
The record level so far was on US election day, where nearly 11% of tweets contained language unsuitable for those of a delicate constitution, most commonly in combination with the words “Romney” “Obama”, “election”, “stupid”, “white”, and “black”.
