April 1, 2013
Stat of the Week Competition: March 30 – April 5 2013
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 April 5 2013.
- Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
- The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of March 30 – April 5 2013 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: Maori, Pacific kids at risk on roads: study
Source: NZ Herald
Date: 3rd April
Here’s the original study produced for Auckland Transport by people at the University of Auckland http://www.aucklandtransport.govt.nz/about-us/publications/Reports/Documents/social-geographical-differences-report-2013.pdf
So the original study basically examines the road crash injury rate/road crash injury risk in Auckland across different age groups, ethnicities, areas etc and draws some conclusions.
There’s a few things I don’t like about this article published by the NZ Herald:
-“Maori and Pacific Island children are more likely to be injured in a crash on Auckland roads than anyone else”
Not really true. The table indicates that Maori and Pacific youth aged (15-24) have a higher road crash injury rate than most people but Pacific youth’s road crash injury rate is not as high as “other ethnicity” in the 15-24 age category.
-“Maori children are 65 per cent more likely to be killed or hurt on our roads than children of other ethnicities.”
The use of ‘other ethnicities’ in this sentence is really vague. If you havn’t read the original study or don’t really look at the table carefully( which I think a lot of people don’t) you’d think that by ‘other’ you mean all other children ethnicities. In fact the article meant the “other ethnicity group” which included NZ Europeans, Latins and Americans.
-“The report, commissioned by Auckland Transport and released today, maps the most dangerous areas – and it shows our youngest and most deprived are most at risk.”
Deprived at risk -yes. Youngest – I’m not sure. Youth (15-24) and 65+ had higher road crash injury rates than adults (25-64) and children (0-14).
-“Pacific Island children were 31 per cent more likely than other ethnicities to be killed or injured on the roads.”
Again with the ‘other ethnicities’ and also I think it should have said “in the children age group”.
-“Maori children were 65% more at risk of road injury than all other Auckland road users.”
This should have said “than children in the ‘other ethnicity’ group.” From vague to completely wrong.
Overall this is pretty average use of findings from an interesting and important study. I fully support efforts to prevent road traffic injury especially for Maori and Pacific children and people living in socio-economically deprived areas.
12 years ago
Statistic: According to the New Zealand Herald, ring graphs should add up to 171.7%.
Source: NZ Herald
Date: 4th April
12 years ago
Statistic: Sex basically doubles your life span
Source: Otago Daily Times
Date: 20 Mar 2013
This article says talks about the many health benefits derived from frequent sexual activity
“The anti-ageing benefits [of frequent sexual activity] are amazing. It basically doubles your life span once you get to your 60s and 70s.”
The article obviously get correlation confused with causation but that’s not why I’m posting it here.
The reason for the post is that the statement about life span is so obviously blatantly wrong that I don’t see how any intelligent person could make it.
The average life span of people in their 60s and 70s is (funnily enough) at least 60 or 70. Doubling this means that sex extends your lifespan to 120 or 140.
OK so she really means “remaining lifespan.” For those in their 60s remaining lifespan is about 20 to 25 years. So frequent sex doubles that to 40 to 50 years.
Just doesn’t sound at all reasonable to me. If sex makes that much difference to life expectancy it far outweighs any contributions due to diet, exercise etc and would have been noticed centuries ago.
12 years ago