October 14, 2013
Stat of the Week Competition: October 12 – 18 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 October 18 2013.
- Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
- The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of October 12 – 18 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: Irish migrant rebuild workers in Christchurch might or might not have higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases than they did last year.
Source: Christchurch Press
Date: 12 October 2013
This story claims that there has been an increase in Irish workers in ChCh with sexually transmitted infections. It doesn’t adjust for the large increase in the total number of Irish workers in the city over the period. No figures are available for other nationalities, so we have no context to judge whether Irish are either over or even under-represented. An absolutely unqualified and uninformed (but sadly, recently re-elected) lay Health Board member is oddly enough asked to contribute his opinion. He prefixes them with the word “Statistically…” to give them more weight. He assumes that all Irish workers in ChCh are heterosexual males, and makes several causal leaps to blam local women for passing on infections.
And why exactly are we just talking about the Irish in the first place?
11 years ago
Statistic: ‘Most Kiwi kids don’t get pocket money – but for those who do, boys get $3 more a week on average than girls’
Source: The New Zealand Herald
Date: 15 October 2013
This statistic claims that boys in Zealand are paid $3 more per week on average than girls. This statistic supposedly comes from a study done by Westpac on 540 children aged 4-18. Firstly, the results of this sample of only 540 children, all of whom have parents who are Westpac customers, cannot be generalised to ‘Kiwi kids’.
Additionally, in the link provided in the article to the full findings there is no mention of this statistic – the type of chore and average amount of time spent doing chores is compared between the genders, but not the amount that they are paid.
11 years ago
Statistic: “Beneficiaries seek out emerging jobs”
Source: Social Development Minister
Date: 16 October
Example of the form where you offer a big pile of numbers without any of the context needed to determine if they’re significant or if they imply the intervention you are touting has had any effect.
11 years ago