October 27, 2014

Stat of the Week Competition: October 25 – 31 2014

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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 October 31 2014.
  • Statistics can be bad, exemplary or fascinating.
  • The statistic must be in the NZ media during the period of October 25 – 31 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.
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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
    Jonathan Goodman

    Statistic: “Sleeping with numerous women protects a man from prostate cancer, a study has found.”
    Source: New Zealand Herald
    Date: Wednesday 29 October

    Because the title of the article is shown to be flawed by the information contained within the article. The theory explained in the body of the article implies that its the number of incidents not the number of partners that relates to the risk of cancer. While having more partners appears to be related to the number of *cough* there is nothing to imply that spending your time with multiple partners decreases your risk more then repetitions with just one significant other, although it does massively increase your risk for STI’s. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1411843

    10 years ago

  • avatar
    Neil Marshall

    Statistic: The schocking state of humanity
    Source: Life Hack
    Date: not sure

    There are some interesting visualizations going on here. The mixture of numbers, dots and pictures to represent the different proportions give mixed messages: which ones grab your attention?

    Where did the data come from?

    10 years ago