May 13, 2013

Stat of the Week Competition: May 11 – 17 2013

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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 17 2013.
  • Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
  • The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of May 11 – 17 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.
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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 »

Nominations

  • avatar
    Simon Connell

    Statistic: “In a three-month trial in Manukau [of an automatic number plate recognition unit], police recovered 15 stolen vehicles, took 180 disqualified, forbidden or suspended drivers off the road, and recovered stolen property from various offenders, [Southern District acting road policing manager Senior Sergeant Steve Larking] said.

    ”So the benefits are clear.””
    Source: Otago Daily Times
    Date: 14-5-2013

    I’m not sure if this is strictly a statistic or not, but this story (which reads like a copy/paste from a press release) seems to accept without question the benefits of the automatic number plate recognition unit.
    We can’t actually make any assessment of the benefits of the unit without some information about how many stolen cards would have been recovered etc. without the unit installed. It does seem like the unit is useful, but it’s hard to judge whether or not it’s worth the $40-$50k price tag without further information.

    11 years ago

  • avatar
    Stephen Murray

    Statistic: Dominion Post graph of Government income and expenditure based on the Budget (Edited to show graph)
    Source: Dominion Post
    Date: 17 May 2013

    The figure represents income and expenditure together on a doughnut graph. The left side represents income, while the right is expenditure, with segments for each subset of source of money or spend.

    Two main issues:
    – They are using a pie-type chart for data which doesn’t sum to 100%
    -Both halves of the doughnut are the same size but represent different amounts of money.

    11 years ago