July 14, 2014
Stat of the Week Competition: July 12 – 18 2014
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 July 18 2014.
- Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
- The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of July 12 – 18 2014 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: Elephants will be extinct in 11 years
Source: New Zealand Herald
Date: 16 July 2014
The article claims that 100 elephants are killed every day and that elephants will be extinct by 2025.
Over 11 years 100 per day means 400,000 elephants will be killed. I can think of many reasons why this doesn’t mean that elephants will become extinct.
1) the killing rate will drop as elephants become more scarce
2) there will always be protected populations that aren’t subject to the killing
3) elephants are giving birth to new elephants
According to the Wikipedia page on elephants an estimate is that there were 440,000 elephants in 2012. So now we know how the author of the article did the calculations – divided 400,000 by 100 elephants a day.
So let’s keep using Wikipedia numbers and see what we find. “…populations in eastern and southern Africa were increasing by an average annual rate of 4.0%.” Well there you go. Even with culls of 100 a day the population is still growing. So no extinction.
Let’s assume that the 4% is BEFORE the culling. That’s adding 17,600 animals each year and the cull is removing 100 a day so that extends the population out for 21 years. This won’t happen due to points 1 and 2 above.
Note that the 4% figure doesn’t apply to all populations. But my point is still valid. If some populations are increasing in size there will be no extinction.
10 years ago
Statistic: Labour would get an immediate lift in the polls if it dumped leader David Cunliffe, a new poll suggests.
The stuff.co.nz/Ipsos poll reveals that Cunliffe may have become Labour’s biggest liability, with a significant number of voters saying they would be more likely to vote for Labour if someone else were leader.
Click here for full poll results in graphics.
The effect is sizeable, making a 13.5 percentage point difference to Labour’s vote.
Source: Stuff.co.nz
Date: 04:41 18/07/2014
I am curious to kow how the 13.5 pct point differernce for David Cunliffe was obtained….
Did the interviewer ask,’If David Cunliffe was not the leader, would you choose Labour?’ then calculate the difference in Labour’s support rate?
FUnny
10 years ago
Statistic: Asthma inhalers can stunt growth
Source: New Zealand Herald
Date: 18 July 2014
My first reaction to this headline was “bollocks!” I thought that someone had done a study and found that children who use inhalers are shorter than those who don’t.
But the publication is from the highly respected Cochrane Library. So respected NZ Govt has given kiwis free access to the library – you can download the paper at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD009471.pub2
The study only looked at parallel-group randomised controlled trials versus placebo and most trials were blinded so the studies were pretty good.
The findings support the headline. They don’t use the word “stunt” though. The Herald put that word in. The actual amount of “stunting” was half a centimetre per year and I’m not sure over how many years.
10 years ago