November 4, 2013

Stat of the Week Competition: November 2 – 8 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 November 8 2013.
  • Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
  • The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of November 2 – 8 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
    Nathaniel Wilson

    Statistic: I’ve won this before, so happy to be disqualified, irrespective I’d like to nominate the Ministry for the Environment, for proposing to set a “National bottom line” value for nitrate (a subset of nitrogen in water) at 6.9 mg/litre as nitrogen, which is almost an order of magnitude higher than the proposed “National Bottom Line” for total nitrogen in water (750 mg/cubic metre (100 litres in a cubic metre). Same goes for ammoniacal-nitrogen too, for which the Bottom Line is 1.3 mg/L nitrogen (or 1,300 mg/m3).

    Overall, this means the combined nitrogen from two subsets could be the equivalent of 8.2 mg/L N, but total nitrogen must be lower than 0.75 mg/L (all guidelines annual medians). Something doesn’t quite add up here.
    Source: Proposed amendments to the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2011
    Date: 7 November 2013

    Subsets should not be greater than complete sets, especially when apparently 60 of New Zealand’s top scientists have been involved (actual scientists not identified).

    Also, units are important! But that may not strictly be a stats issue.

    11 years ago